WASHINGTON — No woman has appeared more often before the Supreme Court than Lisa Blatt, who will make her 50th argument this month. No lawyer, male or female, has done it with quite the same mix of humor, passion and style. And her win-loss record isn't bad, either: 40-6, with two cases yet to be decided. She elicits laughs and the occasional sharp response from the justices, who seem to enjoy Blatt's presentations as much as they respect her legal acumen. When Blatt joked that Justice Samuel Alito was being her "enforcer" with a friendly question in a case about a claimed retaliatory arrest that was argued last month, the justice said, "I'm not trying to be your enforcer by any means. ... You don't need one, by any means." The Supreme Court's guide for lawyers who are arguing before the justices essentially warns against trying to emulate Blatt. "Attempts at humor usually fall flat. The same is true of attempts at familiarity," the guide advises. "Avoid emotional oration and loud, impassioned pleas. A well-reasoned and logical presentation without resort to histrionics is easier for listeners to comprehend." She can be strikingly informal, in one case referring to the highest court in the land as "you guys." She is often blunt, once telling Justice Elena Kagan that her question was factually and fundamentally wrong. She has resorted to the personal, in one case where she felt her Harvard-educated opponent was being condescending. "I didn't go to a fancy law school, but I'm very confident in my representation of the case law," the University of Texas graduate said. "Texas is a fine law school," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, just as the arguments were ending and before the court handed Blatt a unanimous win. Blatt also can be hyperbolic, cautioning last year that a decision against her client, a Turkish bank, would be "borderline, you know, cataclysmic." A ruling that recognized a large swath of Oklahoma as tribal land would have "earth-shattering" consequences, she said in 2018. The justices risked causing "madness, confusion, and chaos" if they ruled for a high school student who was suspended from the cheerleading squad over a vulgar social media post. Clients keep hiring her and the court keeps agreeing to hear her cases, said Paul Clement, Blatt's friend and onetime boss at the Justice Department. "She just has this kind of inimitable style, and she's very confident in her own style and the justices love it," said Clement, who has argued more than 100 times at the Supreme Court. Only a dozen active lawyers who have made as many as 50 arguments. Blatt, 59, makes no apologies. "Oral argument is like truth serum. Under the stress of their questioning, you can't become someone you aren't," she said in an email. "I do think I am very direct but at bottom, my style reflects the fact that I want to win and the Court to step into the shoes of the party I am representing." She heads the Supreme Court and appellate practice at the Williams and Connolly law firm, where her husband also is a partner. They have two children in law school. Blatt has argued just over half her high court cases in private practice, the rest as a Justice Department lawyer. When she made her first appearance at the court in December 1996 at the age of 31, there were two women on the court, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ginsburg. Blatt had been a clerk for Ginsburg on the federal appeals court in Washington. Today, four of the nine justices are women, a record. The percentage of women who argue before them is lower, though the number has jumped markedly this term. Since October, just over one-third of the arguments were made by women, compared with under one-quarter of arguments the year before. Blatt is one of only a handful of women in private practice who regularly argue at the Supreme Court and she has called out the lack of diversity. Last term, two women in her firm argued three cases between them and her onetime partner Charles McCloud is one of the few Black men who have argued at the court in recent years. McCloud now works for the Justice Department. She also courted controversy in 2018, when as a self-described "liberal Democrat and feminist," Blatt publicly backed Justice Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. She called him "the best choice that liberals could reasonably hope for" at a time when Republicans controlled the Senate and the White House. Blatt testified before college professor Christine Blasey Ford came forward with the explosive allegation that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her while they were in high school. Kavanaugh has denied any misconduct. Opponents of Kavanaugh's confirmation complained that Blatt spoke up because she often represents wealthy clients at the Supreme Court. In a tweet at the time, Brian Fallon, then with the progressive judicial reform group Demand Justice, wrote that Blatt puts "corporate interests ahead of progressive causes." Corporate clients are an important part of Blatt's business and include Google, Atlantic Richfield Co., Bank of America and Starbucks. She is representing the coffee chain in what will be her 50th argument in a dispute with the National Labor Relations Board over efforts by workers to unionize at a store in Memphis, Tennessee. On Monday, Blatt represented James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, who is appealing his bribery conviction. Other clients include Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer who won a copyright fight involving an Andy Warhol image of the singer Prince, and state and local government officials. The case she argued last month that prompted the "enforcer" exchange with Alito involved a city council member in the San Antonio suburb of Castle Hills, Texas, who contends she was arrested on a trumped-up charge because she spoke up against the mayor and his allies. Blatt, representing the mayor, said it would be easy to get away with crimes if the court rules against the mayor. "I mean, I really would advise every criminal to put a, you know, political bumper sticker on their car," she said, to laughter.

GRANTS PASS, Oregon — A pickleball game in this leafy Oregon community was suddenly interrupted one rainy weekend morning by the arrival of an ambulance. Paramedics rushed through the park toward a tent, one of dozens illegally erected by the town's hundreds of homeless people, then play resumed as though nothing had happened. Mere feet away, volunteers helped dismantle tents to move an 80-year-old man and a woman blind in one eye, who risked being fined for staying too long. In the distance, a group of boys climbed on a jungle gym. The scenes were emblematic of the crisis gripping the small, Oregon mountain town of Grants Pass, where a fierce fight over park space has become a battleground for a much larger, national debate on homelessness that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The town's case, set to be heard Monday, April 22, has broad implications for how not only Grants Pass, but communities nationwide address homelessness, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public. It has made the town of 40,000 the unlikely face of the nation's homelessness crisis, and further fueled the debate over how to deal with it. "I certainly wish this wasn't what my town was known for," Mayor Sara Bristol told The Associated Press last month. "It's not the reason why I became mayor. And yet it has dominated every single thing that I've done for the last 3 1/2 years." Officials across the political spectrum — from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, which has nearly 30% of the nation's homeless population, to a group of 22 conservative-led states — have filed briefs in the case, saying lower court rulings have hamstrung their ability to deal with encampments. Like many Western communities, Grants Pass has struggled for years with a burgeoning homeless population. A decade ago, City Council members discussed how to make it "uncomfortable enough ... in our city so they will want to move on down the road." From 2013 to 2018, the city said it issued 500 citations for camping or sleeping in public, including in vehicles, with fines that could reach hundreds of dollars. But a 2018 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals changed the calculus. The court, whose jurisdiction includes nine Western states, held that while communities are allowed to prohibit tents in public spaces, it violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment to give people criminal citations for sleeping outside when they had no place else to go. Four years later, in a case challenging restrictions in Grants Pass, the court expanded that ruling, holding that civil citations also can be unconstitutional. Civil rights groups and attorneys for the homeless residents who challenged the restrictions in 2018 insist people shouldn't be punished for lacking housing. Officials throughout the West have overstated the impact of the court decisions to distract from their own failings, they argued. "For years, political leaders have chosen to tolerate encampments as an alternative to meaningfully addressing the western region's severe housing shortage," the attorneys wrote. "It is easier to blame the courts than to take responsibility for finding a solution." In Grants Pass, the town's parks, many lining the picturesque Rogue River, are at the heart of the debate. Cherished for their open spaces, picnic tables, playgrounds and sports fields, they host everything from annual boat-racing festivals and vintage car shows to Easter egg hunts and summer concerts. They're also the sites of encampments blighted by illegal drug use and crime, including a shooting at a park last year that left one person dead. Tents cluster along riverbanks, next to tennis courts and jungle gyms, with tarps shielding belongings from the rain. When the sun comes out, clothes and blankets are strung across tree branches to dry. Used needles litter the ground. Grants Pass has just one overnight shelter for adults, the Gospel Rescue Mission. It has 138 beds, but rules including attendance at daily Christian services, no alcohol, drugs or smoking and no pets mean many won't stay there. Cassy Leach, a nurse, leads a volunteer group providing food, medical care and other basic goods to the town's hundreds of homeless people. They help relocate their tents to comply with city rules. At one park last month, she checked on a man who burned his leg after falling on a torch lighter during a fentanyl overdose and brought him naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal medication. In another, she distributed cans of beans, peas and Chef Boyardee mini ravioli from a pickup truck. "Love, hope, community and a safety net is really as important as a shower and water," Leach said. Dre Buetow, 48, from northern California, has been living in his car for three years after a bone cancer diagnosis and $450,000 in medical bills. The illness and treatment kept him from returning to his old tree-trimming job, he said. Laura Gutowski's husband died from a pulmonary embolism, and she suddenly found herself, in her 50s, with no income. They didn't have life insurance or savings and, within a month, she was sleeping outside in the city she grew up in. "I used to love camping," she said through tears. "And now I can't stand it anymore." Volunteers like Leach came to her rescue. "They're angels," she said. But some residents want to limit aid because of the trash left behind after encampment moves or food handouts. The City Council proposed requiring outreach groups to register with the city. The mayor vetoed it, laying bare the discord gripping Grants Pass. Before the council attempted, unsuccessfully, to override the veto last month, a self-proclaimed "park watch" group rallied outside City Hall with signs reading, "Parks are for kids." Drivers in passing cars honked their support. The group regularly posts images of trash, tents and homeless people on social media. On Sundays, they set up camp chairs in what they say is a bid to reclaim park space. Brock Spurgeon says he used to take his grandkids to parks that were so full it was hard to find an available picnic table. Now, open drug use and discarded needles have scared families away, he said. "That was taken away from us when the campers started using the parks," he said. Still, Spurgeon said his own brother died while homeless in a nearby city, and his son is living in the parks as he struggles with addiction. Once, he said, he realized with shock that the homeless person covered with blankets that he stepped past to enter a grocery store was his son. "I miss my son every night, and I hold my breath that he won't OD in the park," Spurgeon said. Bristol, the city’s mayor, and advocates have sought to open a shelter with fewer rules, or a designated area for homeless people to camp. But charged debates emerged over where that would be and who would pay for it. While support for a designated campground appears to be growing, the problem remains: Many homeless people in Grants Pass have nowhere else to live. And some advocates fear a return of strict anti-camping enforcement will push people to the forest outside town, farther from help. Even if the Supreme Court overturns the 9th Circuit's decisions, Bristol said, "we still have 200 people who have to go somewhere." "We have to accept that homelessness is a reality in America," she said.