by Chuck Sharman

With a one-paragraph ruling on June 11, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted summary judgment to defendant officials with the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC), relieving them from an order by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana that would have placed mental health care and solitary confinement under receivership at the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer. See: Charles v. Westcott, USCA (5th Cir.), Case No. 24-30484.

The decision was not a surprise; the Fifth Circuit dealt a similar blow on March 30 to a Remedial Order (RO) that the district court issued to correct unconstitutional healthcare at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. As PLN reported, the district court had found after trial in that case that the DPSC did not provide Angola prisoners “care at all, but abhorrent and unusual punishment that violates the United States Constitution.” [See: PLN, June 2024, p.20.]

Defendants didn’t appeal that liability verdict, but they did appeal the RO, which directed the parties to appoint a trio of special masters to cure the defects found in provision of prisoner healthcare at the Angola lockup. A panel of the Fifth Circuit said the Court lacked jurisdiction to hear Defendants’ appeal, agreeing with Plaintiffs that the RO was not a final judgment but a road map to reach one. However, a majority of judges on the circuit then voted to rehear the case en banc, after which they determined that the Court had jurisdiction, after all—and then proceeded to use their review of the RO to overturn the liability judgment.

First, the Court had to call the RO an “injunction” in order to vacate it, taking a swipe at the district court for violating the need-narrowness limitation on injunctions contained in the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, when it appointed special masters granted broad authority. The district court got another lashing for finding prison officials liable for deliberate indifference to prisoner health, agreeing with Defendants that they didn’t get credit for continuing to make incremental improvements.

“In essence,” the Court declared, “when prison officials have attempted to care for a prisoner’s medical needs, even if the care falls short, they have not exhibited subjective deliberate … indifference.”

But the Court didn’t stop there, generously calling Defendants’ efforts “innovations.” That the DPSC had been unable at trial to point to any significant improvement in prisoner health outcomes over the long history of the case—it was filed in 2015—was something that the majority was willing to discount simply because the district court refused to conduct another hearing to allow Defendants to present evidence of improvements made in the 17 months between trial and the RO.

Multiple Dissents Attack
the Ruling

Unsurprisingly, the majority got pushback from several judges. Judge Pricilla Richman, though she concurred with the decision, faulted the failure to address violations found at trial of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch.126, § 12101 et seq., and the Rehabilitation Act (RA), 29 U.S.C. § 701 et seq.

Dissenting judge Catharina Haynes was unconvinced that the RO granted the Court appellate jurisdiction. Citing Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Mackey, 351 U.S. 427 (1956), she said that “a document labeled ‘Judgment’ does not close the case, even if it purports to do so, where the case is not actually finished,” and the RO in this case “makes clear that the district court did not ‘intend[] to have nothing further to do,’” quoting Ueckert v. Guerra, 38 F.4th 446, 450 (5th Cir. 2022) (citation modified). She was joined in that dissent by judges Carl E. Stewart, James E. Graves, Jr., Stephan A. Higginson, Dana M. Douglas and Irma C. Ramirez.

Those same five judges joined in a separate dissent accusing the majority of creating “a new, district-court-stripping rule of appellate intervention against institutional litigation.” They also pointed to the “irony of this case … that the majority repeatedly faults the district court for failing to adequately consider the improvements the defendants have already made, but the special masters’ assessment would necessarily consider those improvements as they examined current conditions and practices.”

“Indeed,” the dissent continued, “the district court’s order was patient and protective of Louisiana’s insistence that it could show it had already rectified its dire prison conditions. The district court denied the plaintiffs’ request for immediate remedial intervention after Louisiana contended that it could show its current conditions militated against remedial measures. But the majority mistakes district court restraint for finality.” See: Parker v. Hooper, 171 F.4th 736 (5th Cir. 2026).

Recent research by the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) found that just 1% of medical grievances filed by federal prisoners were sustained over a 10-year period, and reports from state prison systems like Louisiana’s are no more encouraging. In a system that effectively boxes in prisoners with little to no relief for shoddy medical and mental health care, is there any hope when an appellate court rules as the Fifth Circuit did?

To find an affirmative answer, lawmakers must expend political capital on behalf of prisoners who can’t reward them with votes. Still, there are promising changes under consideration, such as sending medical grievances through a review process independent of prison administrators. The Congressional Black Caucus also developed a set of recommendations in 2024 to amend the PLRA’s exhaustion requirement and its requirement to show a physical injury in cases where prisoners are subjected to sexual assault that causes them emotional and mental harm.  

Additional source: Prison Policy Initiative

Subscribe today

Already a subscriber? Login

Related legal case