Judge orders Texas to have air conditioning at all prisons by end of 2029

DALLAS (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Texas to install air conditioning in all of its prisons, saying that inmates in lockups without it are being given punishments that violate their constitutional rights.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said in the 150-page order that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice must come up with a plan to install air conditioning by the end of 2029 in every prison in the state where summer heat routinely soars above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).

He ruled that a lack of air conditioning violates the constitutional right not to be given “cruel and unusual punishments.”

“Witnesses in this case who had been incarcerated in un-air-conditioned Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons described themselves and their fellow inmates getting sick, passing out, and reaching a level of desperation to cool off that made it ‘common’ to splash toilet water on themselves,” Pitman wrote in the ruling. “These are not humane conditions.”

The ruling said that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has estimated that systemwide air conditioning would cost about $1.5 billion. The agency did not immediately comment on the ruling Tuesday. It has previously said it is dedicated to continuing to add air-conditioned beds in its facilities.

The lawsuit was initially filed in 2023 by Bernie Tiede, the former mortician serving a life sentence whose murder case inspired the movie “Bernie.” Several prisoners’ rights groups then asked to join his legal fight and expand it.

In 2025, Pitman found that the extreme heat in Texas’ prisons was “plainly unconstitutional,” but declined at that time to order the state to immediately start installing air conditioning. The case then went to trial earlier this year.

At the time of the trial, the state had about 52,000 beds that were full or partial air conditioning, representing about 37% of the inmates, according to the ruling. That left about 89,000 inmates housed with no air conditioning going into the summer, the ruling said.

The ruling said the agency has acknowledged that 23 people died in its facilities from heat-related causes between 1998 and 2012, and that the agency acknowledged three additional heat-related deaths in 2023. The judge wrote in the order that plaintiffs also presented “credible evidence” of additional deaths from 2023 to 2025 that were at least in part caused by heat.

Amite Dominick, founder and president of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the ruling “made clear that the state cannot keep treating human lives as a budget line.”

“We will be watching every deadline in this order,” Dominick said.