Federal Court Orders Texas to End the Mental-Health Jail Backlog
A federal judge has ordered Texas to stop leaving mentally ill defendants stranded in county jails. On July 9, 2026, Senior U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission must admit jail detainees found incompetent to stand trial into a state psychiatric facility within 21 days — the point at which, the court held, continued confinement no longer serves a lawful purpose and violates the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process.
The decision follows years of litigation by Disability Rights Texas, whose lead counsel, Beth Mitchell, called it a victory for thousands of Texans with mental illness held for months — sometimes more than a year — without the court-ordered treatment meant to restore their competency. Court records showed the average wait for a state hospital bed had stretched to roughly 202 days. In many minor cases, people are jailed longer than the maximum sentence for the charge itself, and are often released without ever being treated or tried.
Recognizing the strain on the system, the judge gave the state four years to build capacity and meet the deadline in stages, under a joint monitoring plan to keep Texas accountable.
As reported by Houston Public Media/KERA or per Disability Rights Texas.