Hold onto your hats, folks—the Supreme Court just sidestepped a contentious fight over a mandated prison project in New Orleans, leaving conservative justices at odds and taxpayers on the hook.
The crux of this saga is simple: the Supreme Court opted not to take up a challenge against a lower court ruling that forces New Orleans to build a new jail, despite a split among its conservative members, Newsweek reported.
This story starts with Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson, who inherited a mess of judicial orders pushing for a new prison before she even took office.
Her legal team argued that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) bars courts from mandating prison construction as a fix, claiming these orders were questionable from the start.
They petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, hoping to halt what they saw as overreach, but the majority of justices said, “No thanks.”
Enter the conservative wing’s divide: Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch wanted to hear the case, with Alito and Thomas penning a sharp dissent.
Alito didn’t hold back, writing, “This case cried out for our review,” and lamenting that the city is left “to pay for the Fifth Circuit’s serious errors” (Justice Samuel Alito, dissent).
That’s a polite way of saying the appeals court botched it, and now New Orleans foots the bill for a project many question.
Before reaching the Supreme Court, a district court rejected the city’s plea to halt the jail’s planning and construction indefinitely, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals backed that call.
Alito criticized the appeals court for flipping the burden of proof, arguing it wrongly placed the onus on the sheriff to justify stopping the project rather than on opponents to defend it.
With a split among circuit courts on who bears that burden, this legal gray area just got murkier, and the Supreme Court’s pass means no clarity anytime soon.
Meanwhile, the new prison—dubbed Phase III—is already 68.6 percent complete as of mid-July 2025, according to U.S. attorneys opposing the sheriff’s petition.
They argued that even if the Supreme Court took the case, a ruling wouldn’t likely come until mid-2026, rendering any decision moot since the facility would probably be finished by then.
That’s a pragmatic jab at the sheriff’s fight—why bother with a legal battle when the concrete’s already poured?
With the Supreme Court stepping aside, the lower court’s ruling stands, construction continues, and New Orleans residents are left wondering if this was the right fix—or just another government overstep.
