Court overturns injunction blocking Washington state from regulating immigration detention center

By Nate Raymond

Aug 19 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned an order blocking Washington state from enforcing a law intended to boost oversight and improve living conditions at the state's only privately run, for-profit immigration detention facility.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lower-court judge wrongly held that a state law imposing new requirements on Geo Group's GEO.N Northwest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Tacoma was inconsistent with federal law.

"This is an encouraging outcome in the fight for basic health and safety standards at private detention facilities," said Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for Washington Attorney General Nick Brown. "We are still reviewing this opinion and potential next steps."

Geo's lawyer, Dominic Draye of Greenberg Traurig, did not respond to a request for comment.

Geo owns, manages or leases more than 100 correctional facilities, immigration detention centers and treatment facilities nationally. Its center in Tacoma has about 1,575 beds and is among the largest such facilities in the country.

Washington's law, which the Democratic-led state adopted in 2023, requires Geo's center to provide nutritious food in a clean and safe facility. It also authorized inspections related to these requirements and the assessment of monetary penalties.

Geo sued state officials two months after the law took effect, claiming it was being singled out while Washington spared state-run facilities from tighter oversight.

The company argued that by doing so, the state law ran afoul of the so-called doctrine of intergovernmental immunity, a principle derived from the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause that generally prevents states from directly regulating the federal government or discriminating against it.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma last year agreed, saying the law impermissibly discriminates against Geo by imposing burdens on the federal contractor's center that do not apply to state-owned prisons.

But Senior U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher, writing for the panel, said state prisons holding criminals were the wrong comparison and that instead Geo's center should be assessed against private facilities holding civil detainees.

"GEO asks us to ignore the critical fact that inmates in Washington’s prisons have been convicted of crimes, and that the conditions of their confinement are part of a penal regime," Fletcher wrote. "By contrast, none of the detainees held in the NWIPC has been convicted of — or even charged with — a crime."

That difference matters because, while Geo's center is the only such facility that could be regulated under the statute in question, the law could still be held to be valid if state law treats similarly situated entities in the same manner. Fletcher cited the existence of two residential treatment facilities in Washington where people could be held involuntarily in a similar fashion.

The 9th Circuit panel sent the case back to Settle to reassess the question based on a comparison to private facilities.

Fletcher's opinion was joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Ronald Gould and Jacqueline Nguyen. All three judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.

The case is The Geo Group Inc v Inslee, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-2815.

For Geo Group: Dominic Draye of Greenberg Traurig

For Washington: Marsha Chien of Washington State Attorney General's Office

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Judge blocks tighter Washington state oversight of immigration detention center