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 by the end of 2029, saying that inmates in lockups without it are being given punishments that violate their constitutional rights.

The ruling was hailed as a major victory by advocates who have fought for years for air conditioning in prisons across Texas, where summer heat routinely soars above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius).

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman said in the 150-page order that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice must immediately begin developing a plan for the installations. He ruled that a lack of air conditioning violates the constitutional right to not 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 state prison agency has estimated that systemwide air conditioning would cost about $1.5 billion.

The state prison agency said Tuesday that it will appeal the court’s decision, adding that it has “robust heat mitigation efforts in place” and is already committed to installing air conditioning in units. The agency said its number of air-conditioned beds has increased from 35,000 in 2018 to an expected 60,000 by the end of this year, and that the number will reach 90,000 in 2028.

Texas has about 143,000 people in prisons across the state.

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.

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.