North Kern State Prison (Wikimedia Commons)

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson ordered CDCR officials to begin transporting inmates at risk of contracting the disease to uncontaminated facilities within seven days, with all at-risk inmates to be moved within 90 days. Officials initially planned to appeal the order, claiming it would be too difficult to move such a large number of prisoners, but have since decided to comply.

Valley Fever, an airborne fungus, is most likely to affect black and Filipino inmates, as well as inmates with compromised immune systems. A Reporting On Health study found that black inmates were twice as likely as non-black inmates to die from the disease. Eighteen inmates at the two facilites, Pleasant Valley and Avenal State Prisons, have died from Valley Fever since 2012, KPCC reported. 

CDCR Secretary Jeffrey Beard explained to the Associated Press that "the order could exacerbate violence between race-based prison gangs elsewhere in California," by upsetting state prisons' "racial balance."

CDCR Spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman agreed that a mass reshuffling of inmates "can dramatically affect the safety and stability of prisons...We have to be careful about sparking racial and gang violence."

Public health experts have expressed concern that CDCR has taken so long to act on behalf of prisoners' safety. Donald Specter of the Prison Law Office told KVPR, "Unfortunately, they have not treated it like it’s a public health emergency. They’ve treated it just as business as usual. If this kind of injury or death had happened in the free world, those institutions would have been closed long ago.

Read more Neon Tommy reporting on prisons here.

Reach Deputy Editor Lauren Madow here. Follow her here.