September 24, 2026
Club Tex
This from the Federalist Papers:
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ordered Texas on Tuesday to air-condition every state prison by December 31, 2029.
He said the heat in most lockups violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Pitman is an Obama appointee sitting in Austin. He put that finding in a 150-page order.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice already said it will appeal. Good.
Federal judges have gotten too big for their britches. They need to stay in their lane or be ignored.
The Eighth Amendment was written to stop torture, not to turn a Texas prison into a hotel. A district judge does not run the Texas Legislature.
Prison is supposed to be harsh and unpleasant.
It is not a country club. It is not a vacation spot. A man who earned a cell did not earn central air on the taxpayer’s dime.
About 108,000 Texas households have no air conditioning at all. Working people live through the same summers without a federal judge rewriting their utility bill.
Nobody calls that cruel and unusual. Requiring air conditioning for prisoners is coddling them.
Just over a third of TDCJ’s 104 units were fully cooled as of September 1. The rest run fans, water, and respite rooms. That is prison. That is the point.
This ruling is insane. Texas should appeal it and keep appealing it.
If the appeals court will not correct it, the state should treat the order the way it treats any other overreach.
A judge in Austin does not get to seize the state budget and the meaning of punishment because a lawsuit landed on his desk.
If a law-abiding family can sweat through August in a house without AC, a convicted inmate can sweat through it in a cell.
Do you think requiring air conditioning in prison is a minimum standard or is it coddling prisoners?
Source: The New York Times X account
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
07:48 AM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 322 words, total size 2 kb.
1
It should be pointed out to these judges that a person committing a crime has forfeited his right to receive the benefits of a civilized society.
Posted by: Bill H at September 24, 2026 08:39 AM (FRG6e)
2
Amen Bill. I remember when Sheriff Arpaio in Arizona had prisoners in tent camps with no air conditioning and was attacked for "cruel and unusual punishment". He rightly pointed out our military personnel in Iraq (at the time) had no air conditioning and just suffered through it. I know from my brother, who was a PACE instructor on navy ships, that those ships weren't air conditioned and in the Persian Gulf the heat was brutal. If we expect that of our military why can't we expect that of our criminals?
Frankly I'd like to see the authorities shut the air conditioning off for this judge.
Frankly I'd like to see the authorities shut the air conditioning off for this judge.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at September 25, 2026 11:57 AM (oflqW)
24kb generated in CPU 0.0648, elapsed 0.2625 seconds.
37 queries taking 0.2525 seconds, 190 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
37 queries taking 0.2525 seconds, 190 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
