Supreme Court denies Arizona’s bid to delay start of takeover of healthcare in state prisons

PHOENIX (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an eleventh-hour bid by the state of Arizona to block the upcoming start of a court-ordered takeover of healthcare operations in its prisons after the state was found to have provided constitutionally inadequate care to incarcerated people and dragged its feet for over a decade in making required improvements.

The state’s request to delay the start date was denied Thursday by Justice Elena Kagan, leaving an outside corrections professional to take over healthcare management for 25,000 incarcerated people on Oct. 19.

Arizona had asked the courts to delay the start date while it appealed both the takeover decision and the appointment of former Ohio corrections director Annette Chambers-Smith as the leader of the effort. Arizona officials brought the delay request to the Supreme Court after it was rejected by lower courts.

Over the last 14 years, Arizona has been dogged by complaints that its healthcare operation for prisoners was run shoddily and callously and that it repeatedly failed to improve a system that was found to have exposed prisoners to harm and preventable deaths.

The state vowed to overhaul medical and healthcare services for prisoners in a 2014 settlement, but was soon accused of failing to keep its promises to improve care. That led to over $2 million in contempt of court fines against the state and, eventually, the revocation of the agreement by U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver, who explained corrections officials had shown little interest in making the changes.

The judge then ruled against the state after a 2021 trial, issuing an injunction that required corrections authorities to fix the constitutional violations. Earlier this year, Silver ordered the takeover after concluding the state hadn’t gotten a semblance of compliance with court-ordered changes and the U.S. Constitution after more than a decade of litigation and that prisoners remained exposed to grave threats of harm and suffering because of systematic deficiencies in providing health care.

The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday's decision.

The lawsuit over healthcare for incarcerated people covers Arizona’s nine state-run prisons but not the nearly 10,000 Arizona inmates doing time in private prisons.