Federal Judge Orders Air Conditioning in Every Texas Prison by the End of 2029: What the September 22 Ruling Says

What Changed, and When

On September 22, 2026, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas released a 150-page order in Texas Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, Inc. v. Lumpkin, No. 1:23-cv-01004. The judge found that conditions in Texas prisons without air conditioning violate the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment, and that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s current response to extreme heat is insufficient.

The order directs TDCJ to immediately create and implement a plan to add air conditioning in every Texas prison. Installation, the judge wrote, must be completed no later than December 31, 2029. Status reports to the court are due every six months, with the first due by March 22, 2027.

On the question of what the agency knew, the order states: “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.” “Deliberate indifference” is the legal standard a person generally has to meet to win an Eighth Amendment conditions-of-confinement case, which is why that phrase is the part of the order lawyers are reading first.

TDCJ said it was reviewing the ruling and could not immediately comment. Marci Marie Simmons, a previously incarcerated person who is among the plaintiffs, described the ruling to the Texas Tribune as a “huge win” and said, “This decision is going to save lives.” Those are the parties’ own characterizations, reported here as theirs.

This is the second ruling in the case. In 2025 the same judge declared that excessive heat in Texas prisons is likely “unconstitutional punishment,” but declined at that stage to require temporary air conditioning, reasoning that it was not a permanent solution. The lawsuit itself began in August 2023, filed by Bernie Tiede, an inmate who experienced a medical emergency in an uncooled cell. In April 2024 four nonprofit organizations joined, and the case expanded to cover everyone held in an uncooled TDCJ facility.

Who in Texas This Reaches

This is a statewide order against a statewide agency, and the numbers in the record give a sense of the scale.

• People currently held in uncooled units. Just over a third of TDCJ’s 104 facilities were fully air conditioned as of September 1, 2026, with 53,676 cool beds reported. The agency has told the court it expects to surpass 61,000 cool beds by the end of this year and approach 90,000 by early 2028. The state’s prison population is projected to top 150,000 by then.
• Families of people who died or were hospitalized after heat exposure in custody. TDCJ has acknowledged that at least 23 people died from heat-related causes in its facilities between 1998 and 2012, a figure the judge wrote is a likely underestimate. Advocates say at least 10 additional deaths between 2022 and 2025 can be attributed to high temperatures, including three whose autopsy reports reference heat as a possible contributing factor. The agency disputes that count, arguing the causes could instead be drug overdoses or other medical conditions.
• People who work inside those units. Correctional officers and contract staff share the same buildings and the same summer temperatures, and have their own legal questions about workplace conditions and on-the-job injury.
• Everyone with a stake in the next legislative budget. TDCJ’s legislative appropriations request, publicly unveiled August 28, 2026, includes roughly $289 million specifically to install prison air conditioning and $591.8 million to build expansion dorms with climate control — together, the agency says, more than 21,000 cool beds. Agency officials testified during the trial that cooling the full system could cost about $1.5 billion.

Texas prisons are spread across the state, so this order touches the Panhandle, East Texas, the Gulf Coast, Central Texas and West Texas alike — not one metro.

What This Changes Legally

An order in a class case is not a payment to anyone. This lawsuit asked the court to change conditions going forward. It is what lawyers call injunctive relief. A person who was hurt, or a family that lost someone, generally has to bring their own separate case to ask for money damages, and that case stands or falls on its own facts.

A judicial finding is still evidence that matters. A federal judge has now written that the agency’s response to extreme heat was constitutionally inadequate and, as to the director, deliberately indifferent. Attorneys who handle conditions-of-confinement cases describe findings like that as significant to later individual claims, though each case is decided on its own record.

The case may not be over. A district court order can be appealed, and the losing side may ask the court to reconsider or seek review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. As of the date on this page we have not located a public filing stating what the state intends to do.

The 2029 date is a deadline for the agency, not a waiting period for anyone else. Nothing in the order tells a person with an individual claim to wait until installation is finished. Separate legal deadlines run on their own clocks, which is the next section.

Texas already sets a temperature rule for county jails. State jail standards require county jails to be kept between 65 and 85 degrees. State prisons have not been under the same requirement, and bills to mandate climate control in state prisons have repeatedly not passed the Legislature. That difference is reported here as a fact about the law, not as a position on any bill.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing on this page is legal advice, and nothing here says that any particular person does or does not have a case. That answer depends on facts a lawyer has to look at. What an experienced Texas attorney can review includes:

• Whether a death or serious illness in custody supports a wrongful death or survival claim under Texas law, and who in the family has standing to bring it.
• Whether a federal civil rights claim fits the facts — claims about conditions of confinement are generally brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 — and which officials or entities would be named.
• What the grievance record shows. The Prison Litigation Reform Act generally requires a person in custody to exhaust available prison grievance procedures before filing suit, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). A lawyer can explain how that requirement applies to a specific situation and what it means for someone still inside.
• What medical and housing records exist for the person — heat scores, housing assignments, clinic visits, work assignments, and the temperature logs for the unit — and how to preserve them.
• How this new order bears on a claim already being investigated or filed, including a case that was put on hold while the system-wide lawsuit was pending.
• What a correctional employee’s options are for a heat-related injury on the job, which is a different area of law from a claim by a person in custody.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

Individual claims have their own deadlines, and they are not extended by the system-wide case. Federal civil rights claims brought in Texas generally borrow the state’s two-year personal injury limitations period, Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003, and Texas wrongful death and survival actions are generally subject to the same two-year period. How those rules apply to one set of facts — including when the clock started and whether any exception is in play — is exactly the kind of question a lawyer answers after reading the file, not from a web page.

Evidence has its own clock too. Temperature logs, housing records, grievance files, video and staffing records are kept on retention schedules, and memories of a particular summer fade. It is best to talk to a lawyer early, while those records are still easy to reach, rather than after a deadline has already passed.

Sources

1. U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, order of U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Texas Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, Inc. v. Lumpkin, No. 1:23-cv-01004, released September 22, 2026 (primary document).
2. Texas Department of Criminal Justice, air conditioning and cool bed status (agency figures as of September 1, 2026).
3. Alex Nguyen, “Federal judge orders Texas to air condition all prisons by the end of 2029,” The Texas Tribune, September 22, 2026.
4. Houston Public Media coverage of the ruling, September 22, 2026.
5. CNN coverage of the federal trial, April 26, 2026.
6. “Texas Officials Testify That Cost to Air Condition Prisons Tops $1.5 Billion,” Prison Legal News, May 2026.
7. U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, 2025 preliminary ruling in the same case.
8. Legislative Budget Board, Adult and Juvenile Correctional Population Projections, June 2026.
9. Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003 (two-year limitations period).
10. 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a) (Prison Litigation Reform Act exhaustion requirement).