What happened
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up New Orleans Sheriff Susan Hutson's challenge to lower-court orders tied to construction of a facility for inmates with mental-health needs, drawing a dissent from Justice Samuel Alito joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and a separate notation that Justice Neil Gorsuch would have granted review.
The order left the case at the certiorari stage, with no merits ruling from the justices. But the dissent framed the dispute as an important Prison Litigation Reform Act question over whether federal courts may keep in place prison-construction relief and who bears the burden when a party seeks to terminate it.
Justice Alito wrote that he would have granted review to end what he called a "longstanding and unlawful prison-building order." According to the dissent, a district court in 2019 ordered New Orleans to construct a new facility for inmates with mental-health needs, even though the PLRA says courts exercising remedial powers may not order prison construction.
The dissent also faulted the lower courts on a separate termination issue. It said the New Orleans sheriff moved four years after the injunction was granted to terminate orders regarding construction of the Phase III jail, triggering PLRA provisions that allow continued prospective relief only if specific findings are made about a current violation, necessity, narrow tailoring and intrusiveness.
Justice Alito said Fifth Circuit precedent placed that burden on the parties supporting the injunction rather than on the sheriff seeking termination. In his view, the lower courts got the inquiry backward by denying the sheriff's motion because she had not provided a basis for termination.
The dissent said the case also implicated a circuit split, pointing to differing First and Ninth Circuit approaches on which side bears the burden in this phase of PLRA litigation. Justice Alito said the Fifth Circuit had erroneously resolved an important federal-law issue and that the case warranted review.