Conservative Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical about a challenge to municipal ordinances that punish homeless people for sleeping or camping on public property when they have nowhere else to go.

The court heard arguments in a case challenging ordinances enacted by the small city of Grants Pass, Oregon, that include fines of up to several hundred dollars and exclusion orders barring people from public property.

Justices repeatedly conceded that addressing homelessness is a complicated policy question, but the conservative justices expressed doubts that a lawsuit under the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, was the best way to deal with it.