For decades, individuals incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (“Angola”) have needlessly suffered from chronic pain, permanent injury, and preventable sickness and death as a result of prison officials’ failure to provide adequate medical care. State employees at Angola routinely and systemically fail to properly assess, diagnose, and treat the medical problems of people who are incarcerated.

In 2015, a class action lawsuit, Lewis v. Cain, was filed against the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections by 12 people with disabilities or serious medical needs incarcerated at Angola. Several of these individuals passed away during the course of the litigation as a result of cancers or strokes that were not detected or treated in a timely manner.

In challenging the abhorrently inadequate medical care, Plaintiffs showed  that the thousands of individuals incarcerated at Angola are all at risk of severe harm when they develop serious medical needs, while scores of men have already experienced unnecessary injury, suffering and death. 

After a three-week trial in 2018, a federal judge ruled for Plaintiffs in 2021, finding that state corrections officials have, for years, been “deliberately indifferent” to the medical needs of individuals incarcerated at Angola. The court found that Angola is violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” by neglecting the serious medical needs of prisoners, and violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act by failing to accommodate incarcerated people with disabilities.

In June 2022, the court held a second trial to determine what remedies were appropriate in light of changes that Defendants claimed they had made. In a November 6, 2023 opinion, the court concluded that the prison has made insufficient changes in virtually every area contributing to the “widespread” deficiencies in health care.

The remedial opinion found “that the “care” [at Angola] is not care at all, but abhorrent cruel and unusual punishment that violates the United States Constitution.” Acknowledging the “unspeakable” human cost of Angola’s practices, the court required the appointment of three special masters, who would propose and oversee a court-ordered remedial plan.

Plaintiffs are represented by the Promise of Justice Initiative, Democracy Forward Foundation, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Cohen Milstein, the ACLU of Louisiana, and Disability Rights Louisiana. Jeff Dubner, Democracy Forward’s Legal Director, and Lydia Wright, Promise of Justice Initiative’s Associate Director of Civil Litigation, serve as co-lead counsel.