Federal judge orders Texas to air condition all prisons by the end of 2029
By Alex Nguyen, The Texas Tribune
September 22, 2026
A federal judge has ordered Texas to air condition all of the state’s lockups, which the prison agency said could cost $1.5 billion, by the end of 2029.
The ruling, released Tuesday, is a win for inmate advocates and their attorneys, who had asked the court to force the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to cool the entire prison system by that time. Just over a third of the agency’s 104 facilities were fully air conditioned as of Sept. 1.
In his order, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found that conditions in Texas prisons without air conditioning violate the Eighth Amendment — which protects against cruel and unusual punishment — and that TDCJ’s current response to extreme heat is insufficient.
Pitman ordered the prison agency to immediately create and implement a plan to add air conditioning in every Texas prison. The installation, he said, must be completed no later than Dec. 31, 2029.
“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,” the judge wrote in his 150-page order.
The decision came after Pitman, appointed by former President Barack Obama, declared in a 2025 ruling that excessive heat in Texas prisons is likely “unconstitutional punishment.” But the judge declined at the time to require TDCJ to install temporary air conditioning, reasoning that the option was not a permanent solution and was unlikely to be accomplished before a preliminary ruling would expire.
TDCJ said it was reviewing the Tuesday ruling and couldn’t immediately comment.
Marci Marie Simmons, previously incarcerated in Texas, called the ruling a “huge win.” She is also part of the Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“We’re just so excited,” she said, laughing and crying. “This decision is going to save lives, and that’s huge.”
Amite Dominick — founder of Texas Prison Community Advocates, another plaintiff — said advocates will work to ensure that the agency meets the mandated timeline.
“An order on paper is not the same as relief in a cell,” Dominick said in a statement. “Our work now is to make sure this timeline is met, that the Legislature funds it, and that no one else dies waiting for the state to do what the Constitution requires.”
Pitman instructed TDCJ to submit status reports to the court every six months — with the first due by March 22, 2027, in the middle of the next legislative session. The judge said he is not dictating the agency’s approach or “at this juncture” appointing a special master to monitor TDCJ’s progress.
A fight over funding
Pitman’s new order could throw a wrench into the agency’s budget planning for the 2028-29 biennium.
Publicly unveiled on Aug. 28, TDCJ’s legislative appropriations request includes $289 million specifically for installing prison air conditioning. It also asked state lawmakers for $591.8 million to build expansion dorms with climate control. Combined, the agency said the proposals would create more than 21,000 cool beds.
Still, The Texas Tribune reported earlier this month that the request was far less than what the agency told the judge it could obligate from the state Legislature in the upcoming budget cycle to install air conditioning — a gap Pitman noted in his ruling.
“This request represents significantly less than half of the $774.3 million that TDCJ estimated it could obligate in the 2028-29 biennium in its Two-Phase Plan, and is a concrete and obvious indication that the agency is not even attempting to following that plan,” the judge wrote.
The second phase, according to TDCJ’s court filing, would have entailed asking the Legislature for $730.7 million in the 2030-31 budget cycle.
TDCJ is set to appear in front of the Legislative Budget Board on Sept. 28 to discuss its funding request.
Prison leaders had previously argued that the agency must be “good fiscal stewards” and maintain credibility with state lawmakers by requesting only what can be achieved within a two-year budget cycle while balancing other major priorities, such as inmate healthcare, contraband detection and prison population growth.
Former TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier, who retired last year, had also said he wanted to cool every facility but didn’t have the money to do so.
Bills mandating climate control in state prisons have failed to pass the Legislature in multiple sessions — despite state law already requiring county jails to be kept between 65 and 85 degrees. Lawmakers also declined to tap billions of dollars in budget surpluses in recent sessions to install air conditioning.
Even so, TDCJ said the Legislature had offered “a historic infusion of funding” by providing $85 million in 2023 and $118 million the following session to add around 29,000 cool beds. The agency also got more than $400 million in 2025 to build air-conditioned expansion dorms and buy an existing lockup that had climate control.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys, however, said these initiatives are not the same as directly spending to install air conditioning in the dozens of Texas prisons that still lack climate control.
Going into the next legislative session, TDCJ could have $287 million less to spend after Texas leaders ordered state agencies to chop 3% from their budget requests to help fund priorities such as property tax cuts.
Pitman, however, dismissed funding concerns.
“Defendant is advised that financial considerations will not be considered a legitimate reason for his failure to comply with this Court’s order,” he wrote.
“Degrading, inhumane conditions”
This was not the first major court battle over prison air conditioning in Texas.
In 2014, several inmates at the Wallace Pack Unit sued TDCJ over extreme heat in the geriatric prison near College Station. Both sides eventually reached a class action settlement to install permanent air conditioning in the notoriously hot unit, prompting a federal judge to declare it “a new day in Texas prison history.”
A decade later, prisoner rights advocates launched a new legal fight by joining a complaint first filed in 2023 by Bernie Tiede, a high-profile inmate who experienced a medical emergency as a result of extreme heat in his cell. This time, the lawsuit covered every person held in an uncooled TDCJ facility.
As of Sept. 1, TDCJ reported that 53,676 cool beds were available in its prisons. The agency expects that this number would surpass 61,000 by the end of the year and reach close to 90,000 by early 2028. By then, the state’s prison population is also projected to top 150,000.
Heat makes the state’s lockups “a living hell,” inmates have said. It can also be deadly.
TDCJ has acknowledged that at least 23 people died from heat-related causes in its facilities between 1998 and 2012 — a likely underestimate, Pitman wrote in his order last year. Inmate advocates say at least 10 additional deaths between 2022 and 2025 can be attributed to the high temperatures, including three people whose autopsy reports reference heat as a possible contributing factor.
The agency disputes this alleged death toll, arguing that the cause could instead be attributed to drug overdoses or other medical conditions.
In his Tuesday ruling, Pitman said there was credible evidence to show that at least nine people incarcerated in Texas prisons died from extreme heat from 2023 to 2025. This is likely an undercount, he added.
In addition, the judge found that the agency’s plan for mitigating sweltering indoor heat is insufficient.
TDCJ had previously touted strategies including cooled respite rooms as well as providing water, cold showers, fans and cooling towels. The agency also created a heat score system to identify and prioritize air conditioning for people at high risk for heat illnesses, such as those who are 65 and older or those who take certain types of medication.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys, however, argued that these mitigation methods offer only temporary relief and are not always accessible. They also said that the heat score system still leaves out some vulnerable groups such as people with undiagnosed mental health issues.
“Importantly, even where heat conditions do not result in immediate injuries or death,” Pitman said, “the heat in Texas prisons creates degrading, inhumane conditions and causes severe suffering.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.