HOUSTON — About 1,300 inmates who’d been sweltering in the Texas summer heat and humidity are getting air conditioning in their housing areas as a federal judge heard objections to a settlement of a lawsuit over their treatment.

The tentative settlement, announced in February, resolved a lawsuit filed in 2014 by six inmates who contended the oppressive heat at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Wallace Pack Unit, about 95 miles northwest of Houston, was unconstitutionally cruel punishment.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison on Tuesday considered objections to the agreement from about 20 inmates at what’s known as a fairness hearing, according to Jeff Edwards, the lead attorney for the prisoners who filed suit. Ellison would make a formal ruling in the case once the objections “from people who have the right to object to it” were heard, Edwards said.

“Most of the objections, frankly, were not actual objections to the settlement but were just complaints that really aren’t precluded one way or the other from the settlement,” Edwards said. “It’s not really objections, but just clarifications or misunderstandings or something like that.”

Ellison last summer ruled the nation’s largest prison system was “deliberately indifferent” to the heat risks and subjected inmates at the Pack Unit to “a substantial risk of serious injury or death.” He ordered the agency to come up with a plan to keep the heat index no higher than 88 degrees at the Pack Unit.

Copy the Story Link