The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Wednesday extinguished a prisoner lawsuit targeting over-detention in Delaware correctional facilities, citing a lack of evidence that state officials were deliberately indifferent to the “consistent problem” of delayed inmate releases.

In a precedential opinion, a three-judge panel of the appeals court sided with a lower court's ruling that denied class certification in the case and granted summary judgment in favor of high-ranking corrections officials, who had moved in recent years to address the issue.

A group of four current and former prisoners who had been held past their scheduled release dates had filed a constitutional challenge in 2012, arguing that systemic over-detention of inmates violated Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The problem, they said, had affected as many as one-third of all Delaware inmates, and state efforts to combat it had fallen woefully short.