Arizona asks US Supreme Court to halt prison healthcare takeover in ‘Hail Mary’ filing

Filed 1h ago · Via Arizona Mirror · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

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Arizona's Corrections Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a court-ordered takeover of its prison healthcare system after a federal district judge and the 9th Circuit both refused to delay it. Judge Roslyn Silver ordered receivership in February after monitors found the department failing 131 of 154 quality benchmarks and reported eight deaths in custody, appointing Annette Chambers-Smith to take over effective Oct. 19.

Attorney Paul Clement argued the state deserves a full hearing before losing control of its healthcare budget and contractors, calling receivership a 'federalism-defying' tool used as a first resort rather than last. Silver's order followed a 2012 lawsuit and a failed settlement, giving the receiver a minimum five years while the department had less than three between injunction and takeover.

ACLU attorney Corene Kendrick called the filing a 'Hail Mary' and noted plaintiffs, representing roughly 25,000 inmates, hadn't even received a deadline to respond, arguing the money spent on Supreme Court lawyers would be better spent fixing the healthcare system itself.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Fourteen years of litigation and the state's answer is one more filing, dressed up in fancier letterhead. When your own briefs boast about hiring more staff while eight people died waiting for care, that's not an argument for patience, it's an argument for exactly what the judge ordered. A courtroom Hail Mary this late in the fourth quarter usually means somebody already knows the score.

Source: Read the original at Arizona Mirror → Scored: Glee Club Polka · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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