A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit of a homeless man in Fort Collins who alleged the city and university prohibitions on trespassing violate his constitutional rights.

Robert-Lawrence Perry also challenged the constitutionality of Fort Collins’ ban on camping in public places. U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore rejected that claim in a March 21 order, along with Perry’s other contentions.

Perry, who represented himself in the federal case, was convicted in municipal and county court for violating the local and state prohibitions on trespassing. The charges stemmed from a Colorado State University police officer citing Perry in 2019. Perry was under an “exclusionary order” from the campus, which he alleged was due to him “feeding squirrels.” The government countered that Perry’s campus exclusion was actually because he harassed employees.

Perry filed suit asking for a declaration that CSU’s exclusionary orders and Fort Collins’ trespassing ordinance are unconstitutional, and that state and local trespassing laws do not apply to the CSU campus.

“Plaintiff asserts that the City trespass ordinance cannot lawfully apply to public property, like CSU campus because it unconstitutionally denies Plaintiff’s right to equal protection of the law,” Perry wrote, “and that the trespass ordinance is unconstitutionally over-broad and vague by granting police unlimited dictatorial power and discretion to seize control over public property to permanently deny anyone access and use of public property for any reason or for no reason whatsoever.”

He also alleged he had been charged multiple times with violating the public camping ban, but was never convicted. Nevertheless, he argued the ordinance unfairly targets homeless residents like himself.

The city and CSU’s board of governors moved to dismiss Perry’s claims. Fort Collins argued its trespassing and camping ordinances do not infringe on any constitutionally-protected right.

“Both ordinances regulate conduct as opposed to speech, and penalize activities constituting special harms to the City and its residents,” wrote the city’s attorneys. “Specifically, the trespass ordinance prohibits activities posing obvious public safety risks to residents, and the camping ordinance prohibits activities posing sanitation and hygienic risks to residents.”

Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kristen L. Mix analyzed the allegations. She noted that CSU’s board of governors, as a state entity, is immune from being sued. As for the city, Mix recommended that Perry’s allegations were insufficient to show a constitutional violation.

For example, while Perry claimed the trespassing ordinance deprived him of equal protection under the law, he did not show that enforcement of the ordinance resulted in discrimination against a class of people. Mix found the same to be true about the camping ban.

“Here, although Plaintiff alleges that he has been cited with violating the camping ordinance seven times, he does not provide allegations of any conduct revealing a motivation to charge Plaintiff because he is homeless,” she wrote.

Mix also agreed with the city that its ordinances do not deter any constitutionally-protected conduct, pointing to court decisions that held sleeping on public property and trespassing on public land are not constitutional rights. Rather, she believed the city’s stated justifications for the policies passed legal muster.

Perry objected broadly to Mix’s recommendation to dismiss his case. Moore, the district judge, overruled Perry’s interpretation of the magistrate judge’s analysis.

Perry “provides no basis for revisiting those rulings,” Moore wrote.

Because Perry’s federal claims were not viable, the judges declined to address whether Colorado’s trespassing law and Fort Collins’ related ordinance apply to the CSU campus and other public property.

The case is Perry v. City of Fort Collins et al.