Opinion ID: 720568
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Court's Inherent Power To Modify

Text: 36 In addition, it is well settled that consent decrees once entered remain dynamic. 16 When a court is using a consent decree to supervise a case involving continually changing conditions, the court is deemed to retain the power to modify that decree. 17 Indeed, there is little question that the district court has wide discretion to interpret and modify a forward-looking consent decree 18 such as the one at issue here. As the Supreme Court has noted,  'sound judicial discretion may call for the modification of the terms of an injunctive decree if the circumstances, whether law or fact, obtaining at the time of its issuance have changed, or new ones have since arisen.'  19 In like manner, the district court has the discretion to modify a decree when the court is made aware that the factual circumstances or the law underlying that decree has changed--regardless of the parties' silence or inertia. 20 37 When we advert to the facts of this case, we note that, as a technical matter, the '95 Reinstatement Order is the vacature of a prior modification to the 1983 Order. Rather than a modification of the 1983 Order--the original agreement reached by the parties and endorsed by the court--the '95 Reinstatement is a return to the terms of the 1983 Order. As a result, on this appeal we do not address whether the court's changes may have gone beyond the intent of the parties. Rather, the legal posture presented to us is a return by the district court to the constraints originally established by the parties and the court, a return motivated by the apparent re-emergence of potentially unconstitutional conditions in Louisiana prisons. The court did not err in doing so. 38 This case was brought initially to protest and remedy unconstitutional housing conditions in Louisiana prisons. In 1995, the district court found that conditions in Louisiana prisons appeared to have returned to a constitutionally precarious state. It did so after considering evidence from the parties and from the court appointed expert. Concerned about a potential crisis in the Louisiana prison system, the district court had instructed the parties and the court's expert to investigate. When the responses of the parties and the report of the expert reflected support for the concerns of the court, it vacated the Modification Orders so that a more detailed examination of the status of Louisiana prisons could be accomplished. We conclude that the district court had the authority to enter the '95 Reinstatement Order; and that, in doing so, it did not err or abuse its discretion. For this reason also, we affirm the '95 Reinstatement Order.