Arizona prison agency defied inmate-healthcare injunction for 3 years and sought to hire unqualified doctors, federal judge found

U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver, in a July 16, 2026 order, rejected a request from the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) to lower the qualifications required of prison physicians under a 2023 permanent injunction, which requires all staff physicians and medical directors to be board-certified or board-eligible in internal medicine or family practice. ADCRR had moved in January 2026 to amend the injunction so only half its staff doctors would need to meet those qualifications and to keep three medical directors and four physicians who are not board-certified, arguing 62 otherwise-qualified applicants could not be hired under the current standard.

Silver denied the motion, writing that ADCRR "has utterly failed to comply with the Permanent Injunction's requirements and [has] aggressively opposed its enforcement" in the three years since the injunction took effect, and finding the agency had never made a good-faith effort to raise physician pay despite repeated recommendations from court-appointed monitors. The plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU National Prison Project, countered that nothing had changed since 2023 to justify lowering the standards the agency itself had agreed to.

The case stems from a 2012 class action, Jensen v. Thornell, that found healthcare in Arizona's prisons so inadequate it violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Judge Silver placed the prison medical system into court receivership earlier in 2026 after concluding the agency's 14-year record of noncompliance left no other remedy.

Updates

2026-07-17 — Judge appointed a receiver to take over prison healthcare [2, 3]

The day after denying ADCRR's motion, Silver formally appointed Annette Chambers-Smith, former director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, as receiver over ADCRR's healthcare operations. The five-year appointment carries a $500,000 annual salary with a cost-of-living increase, and gives Chambers-Smith authority to hire, fire, discipline, and set pay for healthcare staff, to control the healthcare budget, and to renegotiate or terminate vendor contracts, including the roughly $300 million NaphCare contract. ADCRR said it would appeal and ask an appellate court to stay the appointment; Silver said she would grant a stay pending appeal if ADCRR sought one.