A federal trial over air conditioning in Texas prisons began Monday in Austin, TX. The proceeding comes over a year after U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said in a groundbreaking, 91-page ruling that housing Texas prison inmates in sweltering facilities that lack air conditioning is “plainly unconstitutional.” Pitman declined last March to order the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to immediately install temporary or permanent air conditioning, instead forcing the plaintiffs to move towards a trial, resulting in this week’s proceedings.
Pitman ruled that the extreme heat violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, highlighting that many Texas prison units lack air conditioning, with temperatures sometimes exceeding 110F. The judge also found that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s (TDCJ) existing mitigation efforts, fans, ice, and limited “respite” areas, were inadequate to protect the incarcerated population.
To cool the state’s entire prison system, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has said it would cost more than $1 billion. But so far, TDCJ has not asked the Texas State Legislature for the full funding, even as more than 80,000 incarcerated people in its facilities endure scorching summer months without air-conditioning.
“TDCJ still refuses to treat this as an emergency,” attorney Kevin Homiak said Monday in the opening statement for the plaintiffs, which include several organizations advocating for those in prisons. The plaintiffs’ attorneys presented Monday that there were allegedly five heat-related deaths over the last two summers in Texas prisons. TDCJ did not report them to the state Legislature, as the department has not publicly acknowledged heat as a significant factor in these deaths.
Some of the alleged heat-related deaths also didn’t have a recorded body temperature, a gap that the plaintiffs’ experts say TDCJ must address in order to fully understand their deaths. “How can you have a medical examiner give you the right opinion [about] the cause of death when that medical examiner doesn’t know the body temperature?” Susi Vassallo, a medical toxicology specialist, said Monday.
At the same time, the Texas Legislature has repeatedly failed to pass any legislation requiring air conditioning in all Texas prisons, while providing a fraction of the cost estimate. For instance, lawmakers provided $118 million in 2025 for air conditioning installment, which the department said would help bring the total number of cool beds to more than 80,000. But this figure would still leave a significant chunk of people currently in the department’s facilities without sufficient air conditioning, especially considering TDCJ’s population is projected to grow over the next few years.
Watch a report from the Houston ABC on the trial.
