A federal judge has found the extreme heat in Texas prisons that don’t have air conditioning is “plainly unconstitutional.”.

Two-thirds of the state’s roughly 100 jails and prisons in Texas are not fully air conditioned in inmate housing areas.

With the threat of another hot summer ahead, advocates asked a federal judge to declare 100-degree-plus conditions in uncooled Texas facilities unconstitutional.

A new report says many Texas prison inmates fear dying or falling gravely ill from the hot weather and believe actions taken by officials to mitigate the dangerous conditions continue to fall short.

Shelby Knowles for The Texas TribuneStarting July 1, the Texas prison system will again accept inmates from county jails on a limited basis after halting intake three months ago due to the coronavirus pandemic. As of Monday, TDCJ has completed more than 100,000 coronavirus tests on state prisoners, according to prison data. The state prison system stopped intake of people in county jails who had been sentenced to prison in April, after at least 10 county jails reported the virus in their lockups and Texas prisons had nearly 200 cases. By halting intake from counties, the state prison population dropped from about 140,000 inmates in March to about 131,000 in May, according to state reports. In May, the Bexar County Sheriff's Office asked the state for $468,000 to reimburse jail costs for holding TDCJ-ready inmates, according to KSAT.