Plaintiffs ... seek recognition of two new constitutional rights lacking any foundation in the history and tradition of our Nation—the right to be free from exposure to contaminated water and the right to accurate information from public officials.

This is like filing a bug report that the Linux kernel allowed your Thunderbird to receive SPAM email containing false information. It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how the US government is designed to work. Closed by Fifth Circuit as WONTFIX, file request for constitutional amendment (RFC) if desired.

This headline is not correct. The ruling was that a constitutional lawsuit was not successful, not that the the US government has carte blanche to poison its citizens drinking water…

So, the correct headline would be “safe drinking water ruled not to be covered by the US constitution”. There are other binding agreements and regulations than the constitution in the US.

• mdp2021

  today at 9:58 AM

  Still not that simple:

  > The Jackson plaintiffs alleged that their city government deliberately withheld information about the water’s toxicity, and exacerbated the problem through a series of boil-water notices - a practice that can eliminate some bacterial contamination, but also concentrates lead in water. Engelhardt stated there is no “constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis”

  The constitutional question (and note that state Constitutions, e.g. Massachusetts, may instead cover it) is just one piece of the mess.

  • quotemstr

    today at 10:10 AM

    Where is the constitution does it say the state can't do that?

    • mdp2021

      today at 10:16 AM

      We would ask you to rephrase - and, if we interpreted correctly, to reread.

Misleadingly provocative headline, right? The actual ruling from the article is that the US Constitution does not by itself grant US citizens that right. As the article itself points out, there’s nothing stopping other agreements from granting the right, and indeed several states do so explicitly.

• IsTom

  today at 9:54 AM

  On the other hand it means that states can just not do that and leave their citizens without clean drinking water.

  • Smaug123

    today at 9:58 AM

    Does it? I think that conclusion requires observing additionally that all federal law also fails to grant a right to safe drinking water, doesn’t it?

    • gavinsyancey

      today at 10:11 AM

      Many municipal water systems are wholely in one state. Does the Constitution grant Congress the right to control municipal water quality?

      Also it's kind of a moot point if federal law has not granted that right and does not seem likely to.

• ianjbutler

  today at 9:59 AM

  > Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information. These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”

  Nah, headline is optimistic actually: no right to clean water, to water tests, or to the truth about the tests if they occur. No right to healthcare, schools, or even deliverable mail either. But surely some of these are just the kind of thing you might expect as an absolute minimum everywhere if you have to pay taxes.

  • Smaug123

    today at 10:01 AM

    Sorry, I think your pull quote is actually contradicting your gloss. Again, the pull quote states that it doesn’t infringe any constitutional right, not that it doesn’t infringe any rights granted for any other reason?

• icedrift

  today at 10:01 AM

  The headline look pretty accurate to me. Under this ruling, being a US citizen does not guarantee you a constitutional right to safe drinking water; that right would depend on state legislation.

  I think the bigger deal is that the people of Jackson were lied to and this sets the precedent that there is no recourse. It's not like someone in Flint knowingly drank contaminated water, the city withheld the fact that their water was contaminated with unsafe levels of lead.

  • Smaug123

    today at 10:06 AM

    As the article says, the situation in Jackson was deplorable; and it is indeed mind-boggling (to my puny European mind) that the same constitution which grants freedom of speech and the press was also not intended to grant the right to receive only believed-correct information from the government. But the ruling, for example, is not quoted as making any mention of any federal laws? The headline may be true for all I know, but the article provides only evidence for its truth about one particular source of rights.

• cumshitpiss

  today at 9:58 AM

  [dead]

I think this is a ruling that's hard to justify. There are many frameworks under which the judge could have chosen to rule, it could be treated as assault, or some type of aggravated assault/battery, if the lead can be measured in the people who consumed it, it could be treated as fraud, since the water is presumably sold, etc. and reasoning about that it would ordinarily be a punishable tort would make it clear that the government can't impose that sort of thing either, just as it can't send anyone out to punch people.

• JackFr

  today at 9:55 AM

  The argument is the choice of the plaintiff. It’s not the role of the judge to argue the plaintiff’s case and find the most compelling argument.

  • impossiblefork

    today at 10:15 AM

    What I'm saying though, is that he has room enough to interpret things so that a dismissal isn't necessary.

    It isn't the job of the courts to make minimal rulings and avoiding all substantial questions, but to solve disputes. Here we have a case where the government has harmed people in a way that would be a tort if it had been done by anybody else, and people arguing that the government by doing so breached a right. There is presumably a right which can be interpreted as guaranteeing that people's bodies won't be messed with, or things in the US would be quite strange, so there's room to do something useful here, and the judge's choice is not forced.

  • tchalla

    today at 10:05 AM

    This is something that is always fundamentally misunderstood. Of course, judges can extend courtesy but most modern systems are designed on pretty much the accuser arguing their case against the defender with the judge deciding based on law plus arguments presented in court.

I'm not sure what a right to water really means.

A lot of rural cities don't even provide water. People have wells and you pay for them yourself.

• OJFord

  today at 9:52 AM

  I suppose it means that has to be available to you somehow, the easiest example perhaps being that if you're renting in such a place, the landlord is obligated to ensure access.

• pvaldes

  today at 10:13 AM

  [delayed]

• exe34

  today at 9:55 AM

  The first paragraph of tfa:

  > lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water.

  The "right" here is about other people not contaminating your well for their profit. You don't have that right. They can contaminate your well for their profit and you have to find another source of water at your own cost.

• passwordreset

  today at 9:55 AM

  I think it's covered under that "right to life" section of the Constitution. Deliberately poisoning people through their water supply seems like a sure-fire way to deny the right to life of your citizens.

  • defrost

    today at 10:05 AM

    It hasn't counted when it's "accidental" - eg: pretty much all of the US uranium leach well mining resulted in tainted water in a "yeah we know, but don't care" process.

    Also radioactive tailings dam collapses and hard rock mining consequences:

    On Poisoned Ground

      The largest accidental release of radioactivity in the United States did not occur in 1979 at Three-Mile Island. That very same year a collapsing dam released a flood of radioactive debris into the Navajo Nation.
    

    ~ https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/on-poisoned-...

    'We didn't know we were poisoning ourselves': the deadly legacy of the US uranium boom

      Tsosie was one of thousands of Navajos who took jobs in the mines, starting in the 1940s. They worked without masks or ventilation to disperse the lethal radon gas, and they were never told the rocks they were handling – leetso in the Diné language, or yellow dirt – were deadly.
    

    ~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/navajo-dine-ur...

• latexr

  today at 10:01 AM

  Could we please not? In the first sentence of the article:

  > (…) alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water.

  Knowingly let residents drink unsafe water. Surely you can see an issue there? Can we please make a collected effort to comment beyond the title?

  If you don’t know what “a right to safe water” means, then could you please do a web search to try to be minimally informed about the matter before commenting? Took me two seconds to find a UN page.

  https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-s...

  Again, on the first sentence, in bold:

  > Access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as human rights – fundamental to everyone’s health, dignity and prosperity.

  And on the second paragraph:

  > Governments must take a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to water and sanitation improvements

  There’s your right to water. It means that because it’s something fundamental to human life, nations have an (at a minimum moral, often legal) obligation to provide it or protect access to it to everyone under them that lacks it.

  Just for good measure, here’s the Wikipedia page on Human Rights too.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights

  Again, the first sentence already explains a lot.

• cumshitpiss

  today at 9:50 AM

  [dead]

"Engelhardt stated there is no “constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.” "

" “Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information. These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”"

He basically says, the constitution does not care, whether the government lies to citizens, so they continue to drink poison water.

Well, I always though trust of citizens in government is the main thing a constitution should provide and establish, but the "Donald Trump-appointed judge Kurt Engelhardt" apparently thinks different.

• mdp2021

  today at 10:03 AM

  I hope an analyst e.g. from the umbrella of Eugene Volokh will write about this case.

• jvdvegt

  today at 10:11 AM

  So from now on you can safely assume your government is lying (especially the current administration). Worrisome...

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/docu...

Laudato Si' by Pope Francis: On Care for Our Common Home

  30. Even as the quality of available water is constantly diminishing, in some places there is a growing tendency, despite its scarcity, to privatize this resource, turning it into a commodity subject to the laws of the market. Yet access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity. This debt can be paid partly by an increase in funding to provide clean water and sanitary services among the poor. But water continues to be wasted, not only in the developed world but also in developing countries which possess it in abundance. This shows that the problem of water is partly an educational and cultural issue, since there is little awareness of the seriousness of such behaviour within a context of great inequality.

Guess what folks, you now have anti rights.Sometimes I hate America and some americans for the bad things they do, but not like that. A good deal of what america is doing to itself these days looks just as insane as what they are doing to other countrys, or at least other countrys that are not doing it to themselves. There used to be metaphors about poison, and wells, but no one imagined that is could or would leap past that, and become ledgislated policy.

• bamboozled

  today at 10:08 AM

  The shitty thing for all humans is that many governments and voters l just do what America does because…murica, you can see every democracy teetering on the edge of the same idiocracy.

• mschuster91

  today at 10:02 AM

  > A good deal of what america is doing to itself these days looks just as insane as what they are doing to other countrys, or at least other countrys that are not doing it to themselves.

  America voted for unrestrained rabid turbocapitalism not just once but twice. They knew what MAGA and Project 2025 were about, both announced their intentions clear as day, and now they're getting unrestrained rabid turbocapitalism - a world where corporations can do whatever the hell they want and people either have no rights at all or the rights they have on paper are de facto meaningless.

  • bamboozled

    today at 10:09 AM

    Can’t really see how it can be reigned in and once it’s done with America it’s coming for everyone else. Australia with one nation and UK with reform for example.

    My honest assessment is the tech bros felt threatened from potential regulation and decided to do use their platforms and influence to encourage more of the same destruction everywhere else. I cannot explain it any other way. Why would nearly all of them have backed the orange boy ?

The judge evidently is just a tool employed by Trump - against the people. Interesting that there may still be anyone who is not super-rich be a supporter of Trump if you give them factual evidence like this here. But ignoring this for the moment, the judge says that damage by drinking is exempt from other damage. This makes no sense. Even the USA has protection laws against harm. For instance, liability claims of medical damage and what not; even with the current administration, e. g. damage caused by a vaccine (in rare cases). So the judge is totally inconsistent here - the argument that damage via contaminated water should not be considered, makes objectively no sense. AI would do a better job than this "judge".