Lawyers for Texas have appealed a federal judge’s order requiring all state lockups to be climate controlled before 2030 to the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, continuing a yearslong legal fight over air conditioning in the country’s largest prison system.
The state’s attorneys also asked U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman to suspend his order, saying a halt is needed to avoid disrupting critical operations at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice while the appeal continues.
The agency has said it plans to air condition all prisons but has not given itself a deadline, estimating the effort would cost $1.5 billion.
“Throwing chaos and confusion into TDCJ’s ongoing plans to install complete air-conditioning, before the Fifth Circuit has a chance to rule, needlessly wastes finite resources, and frustrates TDCJ’s efforts to acquire funding to address operational and life safety measures to protect its population while moving as expediently to install air conditioning,” the Oct. 8 filing said.
Pitman issued his sweeping ruling in September, when he sided with prisoner rights advocacy groups and their attorneys who argued it was unconstitutional to force inmates to endure indoor temperatures that could hit triple digits in the summer.
As of Oct. 1, just over a third of the state’s prisons were fully climate controlled, leaving around 90,000 incarcerated Texans without air conditioning.
The background
The legal fight started in 2023 with a complaint filed by Bernie Tiede, a high-profile inmate who experienced a medical emergency due to extreme indoor heat. Advocacy groups such as the Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance, the Texas Prison Community Advocates and Texas Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants joined the lawsuit the following year, expanding it to cover every person held in an uncooled state lockup.
In 2025, Pitman found that extreme heat in Texas prisons was likely “unconstitutional punishment.” But instead of ordering TDCJ to install temporary air conditioning, he scheduled a trial that lasted two weeks in Austin in early 2026.
The judge issued his final order Sept. 22, finding that the agency’s response to extreme heat was insufficient and that the conditions in uncooled Texas lockups violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
“In the face of clear evidence of risk — including ongoing injuries, deaths, and suffering every summer — Director [Bobby] Lumpkin’s failure to enact a meaningful, committed plan to install air-conditioning on the timeline that TDCJ has repeatedly indicated is possible is deliberate indifference,” Pitman wrote.
At least nine inmates died in Texas prisons between 2023 and 2025 due to high temperatures, the judge found, adding that even without death or injuries, the extreme heat “creates degrading, inhumane conditions and causes severe suffering.”
Pitman told the agency to air condition all of its 104 facilities by the end of 2029 — a timeline requested by the plaintiffs.
What the state says
TDCJ’s appeal to the 5th Circuit is likely to succeed because it is very difficult to meet the legal standard for deliberate indifference, the state told Pitman in its Oct. 8 filing. It added that the agency is working to install air conditioning in its prisons — many of which were built before the technology was available — on top of implementing various heat mitigation strategies.
“Defendant does not dispute that many of TDCJ’s prison units are only partially air conditioned,” the filing said, “but even if Defendant’s actions could be considered ‘imperfect’ in light of the realities installing air conditioning requires, imperfection is not the measure of deliberate indifference.”
TDCJ added that meeting the court-mandated timeline would disrupt the funding for other priorities such as contraband detection, inmate healthcare and prison population growth.
In addition, the agency said halting Pitman’s order would not substantially harm inmates because it plans to continue installing air conditioning in its prisons.
TDCJ said it anticipates having 90,000 cool beds in 2028. This would leave around 60,000 inmates without air conditioning, as the state’s prison population is expected to surpass 150,000 by then. The agency also disputed Pitman’s findings that there have been at least nine heat-related inmate deaths in recent years, insisting that there were other factors such as drug overdoses and medical conditions.
What the plaintiffs say
Erica Grossman, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said her side will file a response to TDCJ’s request for a halt on Pitman’s order.
In the meantime, Grossman said the agency should put its time and money into making its prisons “more humane” instead of battling the court order.
“While it’s not a surprise given TDCJ’s long history of refusing to take accountability for the people in its custody and care, it is still disappointing that they are spending the state’s resources fighting this case rather than just installing air conditioning,” she told The Texas Tribune.
Looking to the Legislature
The legal fight is happening amid TDCJ’s budget planning for the 2028-29 biennium.
In a summer filing to Pitman, the agency outlined a two-phase plan to install air conditioning in all of its prisons, saying it anticipated obligating $774.3 million from the Legislature in this budget cycle. The second part would entail asking for $730.7 million in the following biennium.
But when TDCJ unveiled its budget request in August, the agency proposed $298 million specifically for installing climate control. Officials also asked for $591.8 million to build cooled expansion dorms. Together, the agency said, the proposals would add more than 21,000 cool beds, but plaintiffs’ attorneys said constructing expansion dorms is not the same as directly spending money on air conditioning.
Pitman noted the funding gap in his Sept. 22 ruling, saying it was “a concrete and obvious indication that the agency is not even attempting to following that plan.”
But as agency leaders appeared in front of the Legislative Budget Board on Sept. 28, they stuck to their lower budget request in a presentation that never discussed Pitman’s days-old ruling.
In addition, agency officials called for a restoration of a 3% spending cut that had been required by Republican state leaders to help fund priorities such as property tax cuts. Lumpkin, TDCJ’s leader, said this order could amount to a $287 million loss. Without this money, he said, the agency would have to cut more than 1,300 employees.
“Out of the 1,300 positions that would have to be eliminated, close to half of those potentially could be correctional officer positions,” Lumpkin added. “A reduction of the correctional officer strength would be detrimental to our mission of public safety and how we carry out our operations day to day.”
The 2027 legislative session begins in January. While Texas law requires county jails to be kept between 65 and 85 degrees, lawmakers have repeatedly failed to enact similar rules for prisons.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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