The Texas Supreme Court declined to take up Dallas County’s appeal to revive a lawsuit over wait times for mentally incompetent inmates Friday, leaving a lower court’s dismissal of the case in place.
Dallas County and Sheriff Marian Brown sued the Texas Health and Human Services Commission — or HHSC — in 2023. The suit accused the agency, which operates state hospitals, of not accepting legally incompetent Dallas County jail inmates at those facilities in a timely manner. The county estimated it costs more than $7.5 million to detain inmates caught in the backlog.
The 15th Court of Appeals dismissed the suit last year, ruling all counties have to bear the cost of detaining inmates, and the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure doesn’t require HHSC to move people into state hospitals within a certain time frame…