The planned early release of more than 40,000 inmates in the U.S. state of California was put on hold after the Supreme Court put off a ruling on the matter on Tuesday.
The judge's order had been put on hold and would remain so " pending review by this court," the Los Angeles Times said in a report from Washington.
Last year, a panel of three federal judges ordered the state to come up with a plan to reduce the prison population by more than 40,000 inmates within two years, saying prisoners were being denied adequate healthcare because of overcrowding.
In his appeal, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the judges had overstepped their authority under federal law.
But before the high court acted on that appeal, the state had filed a plan to comply with the judge's order.
In its Tuesday decision, the justices dismissed the initial appeal from Schwarzenegger.
Washington attorney Carter Phillips, who is representing the state of California, said he was preparing a new appeal that challenges the entire basis for the judge's order. Today's action "largely affects the timing," he said in remarks published by the paper.
The justices will decide in a few months whether to hear the prison case, and the prison-release order remains on hold in the interim, said the paper.
The proposed early release of prisoners drew criticism from local governments and law enforcement departments.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) warned earlier that public security would be jeopardized.
"The county of Los Angeles will be dramatically impacted" if thousands of felons are to be released to the city, LAPPL President Paul M. Weber said in a statement.
"What concerns law enforcement is that unlike the current program, where released inmates have been placed on parole, restricted from certain types of activities, or provided various community-based rehabilitative resources, these inmates will be completely unsupervised," said Weber.
"It is a virtual certainty that the releases' overall cost and risk to local communities are going to far outweigh any initial savings for the state," he said.
In August, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then Police Chief William Bratton publicly opposed a similar measure seeking to cut 1.2 billion dollars from the correctional budget by releasing about 37,000 low-risk inmates to comply with federal court orders to reduce overcrowding at state prisons.
"The idea of (37,000 prisoners) coming back with no increase in drug treatment, a job market with 14 percent unemployment, no likelihood of jobs -- what do you think they're going to do?" Bratton said at the time.
Villaraigosa warned that "to just release folks without a safety net could create chaos."