Den­ver city attor­neys emerged vic­to­ri­ous last week after appeal­ing a coun­ty court judge’s rul­ing that the city’s con­tro­ver­sial urban camp­ing ban was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and amount­ed to cru­el and unusu­al punishment.

The orig­i­nal rul­ing, from Judge John­ny C. Bara­jas in Decem­ber 2019, called the city’s camp­ing ban into ques­tion. Police briefly paused enforce­ment of the ban but resumed as city attor­neys appealed the deci­sion to Den­ver Dis­trict Court.

Den­ver Dis­trict Court Judge J. Eric Elliff on Thurs­day reversed Bara­jas’ rul­ing and remand­ed the case back to Den­ver Coun­ty Court, said Ryan Luby, spokesper­son for the Den­ver City Attorney’s Office.

The deci­sion came as a dis­ap­point­ment, said Andy McNul­ty, the lawyer who filed the case on behalf of Jer­ry Bur­ton, who received a tick­et from Den­ver police for vio­lat­ing the city’s urban camp­ing ban at a site com­mon­ly known as Jerr-E-ville.

McNul­ty said he will ask the Col­orado Supreme Court to take up the case. If it does not, the case will be set­tled with a jury tri­al in Den­ver Coun­ty Court, he said.

Should the Supreme Court take up the case and rule in Burton’s favor, McNul­ty said, it would spell doom not only for Denver’s camp­ing ban but also for sim­i­lar bans places like Col­orado Springs, Boul­der, Fort Collins, Duran­go and more.

“It would have some seri­ous con­se­quences statewide,” McNul­ty said.

In his rul­ing, Bara­jas cit­ed a 2018 deci­sion from the 9th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals strik­ing down a camp­ing ban in Boise, Ida­ho. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review that rul­ing, let­ting it stand.

How­ev­er, Elliff agreed with Den­ver attor­neys’ con­tention that the prece­dent set in the Boise law­suit was not applic­a­ble in Burton’s case, Luby said.

“In its enforce­ment of the Ordi­nance, the City was not moti­vat­ed by a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pur­pose nor a desire to harm a ‘polit­i­cal­ly unpop­u­lar group,’ and thus there was no ‘ani­mus’ on the part of the City,” Elliff wrote in his deci­sion. “The City does not have a cus­tom and prac­tice of arrest­ing, harass­ing and oth­er­wise inter­fer­ing with home­less peo­ple for engag­ing in basic activ­i­ties of dai­ly life.”

Denver’s urban camp­ing ban is enforced com­pas­sion­ate­ly and with an empha­sis on pro­vid­ing ser­vices and shel­ter to those who need them, Luby said in a statement.

How­ev­er, city offi­cials have also come under fire this year for large-scale cleanups — col­lo­qui­al­ly known as “sweeps” — of home­less encamp­ments. Those sweeps have been used to clear out encamp­ments with­out lean­ing on the camp­ing ban and, some say, with­out prop­er justification.