Attorneys for incarcerated individuals in Arizona prisons are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a last-ditch bid by the state to delay federal control of its healthcare system.
In a new filing, the lawyers detailed the 14 years of litigation, millions of dollars in fines, agreements by state officials to do better, and finally an injunction telling the state to ensure that 25,000 inmates in state-run facilities get the physical and mental healthcare they are entitled to under the U.S. Constitution.
But they pointed out that, even now, the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry admits it still isn't meeting the legal standards.
All that resulted in U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver, out of patience, appointing a former Ohio corrections official to oversee the prison healthcare system by Oct. 19.
Ryan Thornell, director of prisons, has asked for more time to fix the problem and do it himself without a court-appointed receiver.
Attorneys for the ACLU and Prison Law Office are telling Justice Elena Kagan, who handles such immediate issues for Arizona and surrounding states, to reject the request.
"In practical terms, these failures have resulted in widespread and shocking medical and mental health neglect," they wrote. "People incarcerated in Arizona's prisons are dying unnecessarily."
The lawyers said Silver, who had tried for years to get the state to comply with what is legally required, was justified in taking the unusual, but not unprecedented, step of appointing a receiver to run the healthcare system.
"In order to protect people who are confined in Arizona's prisons from suffering the same cruel fate as others before them, the court imposed a remedy that under these circumstances is the least intrusive means of preventing further unconstitutional conduct," the attorneys told Kagan.
They said she should reject the request to delay Silver's order "so that the receiver can begin the important work of implementing the injunction — work that all parties agree is essential to save lives in Arizona's state prisons."
No date has been set for Kagan to either rule herself on the state's request to delay the receiver, or for her to ask the full court to weigh in.
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The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by Arizona to block the start of a court-ordered takeover of healthcare operations in its prisons after the state was found to have provided inadequate care to incarcerated people and dragged its feet in making improvements. -
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