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.
The first one I can understand from history (although I do not agree for modern times). But the right to accurate information from public officials, I thought that was indeed an absolute and basic right in a democracy, and it should very strongly be and always have been. (Exceptions like "national security" notwithstanding, and those should probably be more narrowly restricted than they are now.)
I implore people to think about separation of powers. Just because something is desirable in the abstract doesn’t mean the judiciary should be doing it. Who decides what information is “accurate?” What are the implications of having the judiciary start policing the other two branches over such a fuzzy concept?
There’s a map/territory error in conflating the right to accurate information (or the obligation of government officials to not knowingly lie) with court determination of what accurate information is in any specific case.
We have a very clear constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, and yes, determining what that means is very fuzzy and always has been. Doesn’t make the right evaporate.
But even separating the two, the entire court system is literally designed to determine what’s true. From murder to false advertising, the courts exist to resolve disputes about what’s true.
If we’re saying they can’t or shouldn’t fulfill that role… what’s left? Just enforce the will of the current government, skipping all that stuff about testimony and fact-finding?
Fact-finding is a subsidiary function of courts that is cabined by two important principles. First, there must be a cause of action: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/cause_of_action. Courts cannot just go fact-finding on their own. Common law or statute must have articulated a specific set of factual conditions that gives rise to a legal claim for relief. So courts can engage in fact-finding, but only within very specific guardrails outlined in the laws that govern the cause of action.
Second, courts must avoid intruding into the work of the political branches: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/political_question_doctrine. You can't turn to the courts to adjudicate what facts are "accurate" in the context of a political debate.
Sure, agreed on both counts. But to the extent government officials have a duty not to lie to the public, that duty extends to facts, not political opinions. I find the courts a perfectly reasonable way to adjucate e.g. the actual water volume in the Colorado river.
To be sure, there's a good discussion to be had about this, whether it should be the parliament or the judiciary that can rule over this, or both, and different countries have different balances in this area.
Generally speaking however, the law and especially the constitution is full of abstract and fuzzy concepts, and judges have ample experience in adjudicating those, as well as balancing them against each other. And don't come to me with alt-right reasoning about what is accurate, true or false. Basic truth isn't too hard to determine.
The main thing is that there should be checks and balances, especially on the executive branch, and currently the US is dismantling them in bulk.
> And don't come to me with alt-right reasoning about what is accurate, true or false. Basic truth isn't too hard to determine.
This isn't some newfangled "alt-right reasoning." Orwell criticized the "Ministry of Truth" half a century ago. More fundamentally, it reflects the U.S. Founders' axiomatic understanding that nobody can be trusted. They did not create a system where lawyers and judges are the "microkernel of the operating system," being trusted to perform critical functions such as "enforcing the law" and "deciding basic truths." Indeed, in the Founders' system, individuals can't even sue the government except in narrow circumstances with the government's consent.
Yes, it’s the european model rooted in Prussian imperial bureaucracy versus the American model rooted in the wisdom of the crowds. You’re welcome to like your approach better. But our approach has an impeccable track record.
That's... a matter of interpretation, if I'm reading the news of what's happening over there. I'm quite happy we got the 2.0 version of separation of powers here, as well as a constitution that's a little less set in stone.
Congress is supposed to be the forum wherein this happens. It's intentionally a broader forum of people's representatives from the entire nation. If congress can't agree to a law then the federal government probably shouldn't be doing it, even if something is desirable.
Be careful of blind partnership. Both parties have been increasingly guilty of this in recent decades. The republican party internal dynamics are just the most recent.
Even then Trump has been loosing his grip on the republicans in congress. It's slight but there. IMHO thats for the best.
I believe that "accurate" in this context means "not knowingly a lie" rather than "is objectively correct". The allegation is that city officials knew the water was not safe to drink but told residents that it was safe.
Who decides if I committed a crime by lieing/telling inaccurate information to the FBI? Oh, the courts do you say? If they can police me over such a fuzzy concept, they can police themselves as well.
The federal courts are going to be surprised when their 'there is no law, just enforcement we want on the plebs' results in juries made up of plebs stop approving the unfairly applied to some people convictions the feds want. It's basically the last recourse we have. 'enforce the law correctly and fairly, or we the people will stop enforcing it at all'.
Sure they can. Jails (run by the local police or sheriff) lie about the safety of the food they serve, the facilities they run, the outcomes of the policies they implement all the time.
In saying “accurate information” there is a hidden presumption that not all government information needs to be shared. Forget about whether it’s accurate or not and who decides what’s accurate, just be maximally open
The framers discussed this in a few key ways, which resonate ALL TOO WELL with today:
Anti federalist Brutus 1 suggested that in a large republic, representatives will be too far removed from their constituents. Because citizens cannot personally observe public officials, the people "cannot be acquainted with their characters, know their motives, nor be informed of their proceedings." A lack of information would prevent citizens from holding officials accountable.
Anti federalist Centinel 1 directly warns against the manipulation of information by the wealthy elite, arguing that the public can easily be deceived by "well-born" politicians who mask their pursuit of tyranny behind noble rhetoric.
In Federalist 10 and 51 Madison argued alternatively (looks naive today) that a large, diverse republic makes it harder for corrupt politicians or factions to spread misinformation effectively across the entire nation.
In Federalist 70 Hamilton explicitly defended a single, powerful President because it provides accountability. With a single executive, the public knows exactly who to blame for bad policy or false statements, preventing officials from shifting blame or hiding behind an anonymous committee
But the Sedition Act passed only 10 years after the constitution made it illegal to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government, a restriction it could be argued that the government doesn’t even have in itself
Modern law of relevance include the Smith Mundt Act 1948 which prohibited the government from propagandizing its own people (limited to foreigners). The smith mundt “modernization” amendment crammed into NDAA 2012 did away with this restriction and now we have an explosion of govt-payroll influencers , news anchors, talking points memos etc that aren’t exactly…accurate
> But the right to accurate information from public officials, I thought that was indeed an absolute and basic right in a democracy
That's a misunderstanding on your part. You can't have a "right to accurate information" because officials might simply be wrong. "Being wrong" can't be against the law. Additionally, people simply disagree about lots of things and often there's no procedure to resolve this.
However, you can't lie under oath, or in front of Congress. But lying is not the same as providing inaccurate information. In most other contexts, lying is legal.
Time to stop considering the US a democracy? It feels the country is it’s own weird system now, not sure how to classify it but something I would call Trumpocracy. The democratic processes don’t seem to serve the people, it’s all hacks to try to use the system against itself to entrench the administration ideology (some might draw parallels to history here)
Now I want to read a version of that report with 2026 events taken in account. It feels like the US is on its way to be an elected autocracy according to that framework
Pre (like 20+yr) WW2 the scope of the activities that the government laid claim to was infinity smaller so the blast radius was likewise infinitely more limited.
This is how you wound up with historically ethnic banks, universities, etc, etc. Black guy, pole, whatever, can't get a loan (well they can, at a "fuck you" price) from the wasp bank so they go to the lending group they know through their church or whatever. After a few years of that the guys who are doing that lending say fuggit, quit their day jobs and start a bank. Wash rinse repeat to varying extents for just about every sector business.
They'd never allow that today. The incumbents would get the enforcers to kill that before it becomes a legitimate standalone business. And the enforcers have a lot more ammo today because of past 70yr of (mostly civil) law and jurisprudence.
But any modern equivalent isn't done along racial/ethnic lines and so the useful idiots will think it's all fine and dandy and defend it out of one side of their mouth while complaining about a lack of opportunity out of the other.
I’m not as sure. It feels that way. But society was also smaller in its footprint.
Keep in mind the US government pre watergate did a lot of spying on political opponents (MLK, Malcolm X, etc). Presidents impounded funds pre Watergate at alarming rates.
We put US citizens in camps during WW2 for being of Japanese descent. See also native Americans and the Federal govts enforcement of slavery.
You might say the govt has just grown in proportion to the container it’s held in.
Generally, I've seen courts derive this kind of right from general rights like "the state cannot just arbitrarily kill or maim you", which (hopefully) are explicitly written down. So it doesn't feel that unreasonable to ask the court to specify that "the state cannot just arbitrarily kill or maim you" extends to "the state cannot arbitrarily lie to you in ways that will endanger your life/health".
These headlines is just press fodder for the grievances-industrial-complex to cry about how the gov is incompetent
Of course drinking water is important - I'm not questioning that
But there's a difference between a meaningless statement of "everybody should have the right to cleaning water" which is a vapid statement and actually building towards it (with regulation on the quality of water, EPA, working on water treatment, etc)
"Right to cleaning water" is like saying "you should move more" to a fat person
I am absolutely mindboggled at the idea that you think the US should not guarantee safe drinking water everywhere for everyone. Unless this comment is pedantic legal snark.
What is the remedy? There isn’t a private cause of action through the state courts and suing the government itself will end up with sovereign immunity. If they can’t raise a 1993 claim, how specifically do you expect them to sue?
If a place is especially dry or inaccessible, then the lack of water should be one of the considerations for establishing a community there. This idea that no matter the expense or engineering constraints, the government must drag out the pipes and infrastructure to your private retreat, will be putting people in dangerous situations and a complete waste of scarce resources.
I think that perhaps you don't understand what a right means, in the context of government services.
>then the lack of water should be one of the considerations for establishing a community there.
People don't get to choose their birthplace, and circumstances change. Worrying about pottable water should be a solved problem in a first world country.
I didn't get to "establish a community". For several reasons, some historical. I didn't start the fire.
>I see that you've never lived somewhere with water scarcity.
I live in the US, so no. Despite all the droughts and cautions to use less water (even though it's rarely personal water usage that is causing such water shortages), it hasn't hit a point where I need to ration liquid.
That’s not what the outcome of this case would be if it went in the other direction.
In this case the state told the people that the water it was already providing was safe, when in fact it was contaminated with lead. This case was about a 1983 suit for state officials knowingly violating a constitutional right.
Few constitutional rights create affirmative responsibility for the state to provide for them. Pretty much just public defenders.
The authorities assuring that the drinking water that is sold to you is really of drinking water grade is the most basic of the basic rights. Not a luxury. The "right to culture almonds" or to have a pool is a different question.
You're not making an argument there. The people, through the government, chooses what is a right and what isn't. Not you alone. Clean drinking water seems pretty fucking important to me, and to a lot of other people too, it seems.
The natural state of being is freedom, it up to society to restrict what they deemed necessary and punish the offenders. Unless the body of water or reservoir are claimed by the government then it is free for anyone to use, quality notwithstanding. Safe, clean water implies certain amount of processing and I agree that unless it is explicitly written then it is up to the users to sanitize that water
The position is not that the government needs to ensure that all bodies of water are potable or that the government needs to provide clean water to every resident.
The claim is that you have a 1983 case against state officials that tell you that the municipal water is clear when they know it is in fact contaminated with lead.
I've been to a few islands that must import bottled drinking water. The citizens themselves do, not the government.
I actually got stuck on one such island once, for one night with my then-twelve-year-old. First thing we did after securing a place to sleep, was acquire water.
Not necessarily, which is also why animals do not have rights. A right isn't always the correct solution to a problem.
For example, if your tap water is poisonous, but you can get safe drinking water from a store, you right to safe drinking water would be satisfied by what the store provides.
I'd say the main issue in this story is that the danger was known, but not disclosed.
But maybe it should be? What does it say about the US government apparatus and its basic claims to legitimacy if it can't even guarantee safe drinking water? What lack of aspiration and ambition does such a denial demonstrate? Why should its citizens accept such an abdication of even the most basic duties?
What national government _does_ guarantee safe drinking water to its citizens? You are attacking the legitimacy of the US government by holding it to a standard that no nation on Earth is held to.
The US has regulations and they are enforced, with some local problems. Just like every other nation on Earth.
The rhetorical trick was not mine. There are numerous people in this comment thread that used the word guarantee as a synonym or implied outcome of the word right.
Do you think there's never been an instance of an unfair trial in the US despite the codified right to a fair trial?
A right is always just a declaration of aspiration and an accountability mechanism should said aspiration not be lived up to - it cannot by itself guarantee any outcome because implementation will always be imperfect.
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.
> 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.
As for the content: the law says what it says. Where in the constitution of the United States of America and its amendments does it say that a state government must be truthful about public health statements?
The law says what it says. A behavior might be rotten, evil, illegal under other documents, and an all-round bad idea and still not a violation of, in particular, the constitution of the United States of America and its amendments
But not Mississippi evidently, or the court probably would've mentioned that and Mother Jones reporter Sophie Hurwitz would've mentioned that in the article. Maybe Mississippi should enact some kind of state constitutional provision asserting this, but they haven't.
No, that headline would still be wrong. It makes no sense to make water exempt from other forms of damage caused by treatment or contamination. By the same "logic" you apply here, you could reason that radiation is exempt from the constitution because back in 1796 something they did not specify that down via law. That makes no sense.
Ok, so the article buries a lot of the context here. To clarify: plaintiffs can 100% sue the city for this under tort law (I believe the clean water act, but there’s probably other causes of action). This particular case was about suing the city officials in their personal capacity. So making those individuals pay, instead of/in addition to the city. Government officials are generally protected under qualified immunity. One exception to qualified immunity is 42 USC 1983: deprivation of rights under color of law. But that requires them to prove that these officials violated some constitutional right, beyond just some statute.
The victims can sue the city/state. They might already be doing so in parallel. And honestly that’s the only way to be made whole: these city officials don’t have the tens of millions that would be required to compensate victims. This is more about holding government officials individually accountable.
> This is more about holding government officials individually accountable.
The state can also file criminal charges against the officials, although given that the Flint water crisis didn't result in any criminal convictions despite the evidence, I'm not holding my breath. Not to mention that the state could choose _not_ to file charges. In which case, what avenue for justice is left? Financial compensation is only part of it.
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
Cool cool, I can see you've got a sharp eye for detail my friend but let's really get down to it. What exactly is it that you really want to defend here? Why do you want to defend it? And more to the point, do you like drinking clean water? Do you think people should have it or not?
Speaking for GP, I want to have both a reasonable legal system and safe, clean drinking water.
We can have both, and the former precludes the idea that plaintiffs and judges can simply invent new fundamental rights that require enormous sums of money and labor to implement without any democratically designed framework because they're a good idea.
We have a route to do this, it's legislation and regulation. Note that in this particular case, while these things did not work perfectly - the Jackson water system had a lot of well-reported problems, and the lawsuit was filed in response to that - there's been hundreds of millions poured into remediating the problem. It is not simply being "ignored". People are not doing "nothing." The EPA, MSDH, and Jackson authorities have been working on the problem, not ignoring it because it's not a Constitutional right. In late 2025 the work resulted in the Jackson water supply once again meeting Safe Drinking Water Act requirements.
Here is the latest comprehensive water quality report, on a reporting website that the DOJ, EPA, and courts forced JXN to create:
I don’t have skin in this game, being from the increasingly oppressive UK and not the USA, but:
> what do you want to defend
Accuracy, and in this case people correctly knowing that their rights stem from some source (if they do! I don’t know the legal facts) or knowing the appropriate venue in which to campaign for them, rather than incorrectly believing that they don’t have rights and/or can’t get them.
> why do you want to defend it
Because words still have meanings, and people pretending they don’t, while screaming in ever more shrill tones at each other, is extremely tiresome, and the Internet is full of it.
> Rather, the remedy for Plaintiffs’ injuries lies in pursuing tort
claims, electing representatives who will better manage the public-water
system, and petitioning their representatives for other remedies.
which is easier said than done.
From outside of US this seems extremely ass backwards.
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.
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.
It is mind-boggling, but the US Constitution doesn't do that.
It's not unique in that.
Bad-faith pollution of truth is a new legal concept, and only a few countries have explicit legal protections against it.
The UK had a case a few years ago where this was tested, the judgement was "Well, if we expected our politicians to tell the truth, where would that end, nyuck nyuck nyuck?"
It's actually a tacit assumption that politicians and representatives lie, the media lie, and this is how things are.
There are proposals in the UK and Wales to change this. My guess is they won't get anywhere near explicit approval in the UK. They might in the Welsh Senedd.
Meanwhile the US has Fox claiming that it's an 'entertainment' channel, and no one should expect truth or honesty from it.
The US Constitution, by itself, grants US citizens everything as a right, then enumerates the exceptions to those all-encompassing rights carved out as necessary for the operation of a government.
The correct question is: Where does the US Constitution grant governments the power to poison and lie to residents?
This isn’t some pedantry but fundamental American civics. The US Constitution explicitly does not enumerate rights. It’s default-allow, explicit-deny regarding human rights. It’s rather alarming that anyone would think it’s default-deny, explicit-allow. That’s not how the Constitution is written.
The tenth amendment provides that the federal government has only the enumerated powers and everything else is for the States or the people. It doesn't limit the States to enumerated powers.
I looked a bit in the early morning to see what arguments were effective in the Flint case which has similiar municipal activities... The case history there was too complex for me. Many suits in federal and state court, lots of federal suits dismissed for various reasons (mostly lack of standing if I understood the summary) and then a settlement in federal court that resolved all (most?) of the suits. I didn't really see a discussion of the legal theory from which liability arose, just what the remedy was and if it the settlement was reasonable for minors and unrepresented parties.
Finding an argument that pleases the court and/or appealing to a higher court in the hopes that your argument pleases them is pendantry and american civics.
By this logic, state employees and elected officials, who are themselves US citizens, have the right to say anything at all to the public, including blatant lies about public health issues, because there's no specific legal exception banning them from doing so.
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.
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.
Exactly, unless they ignore that and decide based on precedent. But after we fence them in with arguments, evidence, AND precedence then surely.. oh nope, they could ignore those things and talk about reliance interest! I'm sure someone wrote down exactly how much reliance interest is "sufficient" to justify doing something else though. No? Gosh it sounds like a rigorous process and all but I'm starting to think maybe they just do whatever they want
Yes, of course, but he interprets the arguments and evidence presented to them.
Here he chooses to interpret what they say as demanding the recognition of a new constitutional right to safe water and to correct information. It is not at all clear that that's a good choice.
He could equally well interpret the situation by analogy: the government deliberately tricked people into drinking unsafe water, and people were, depending on whether there is evidence of poisoning from the lead, either provably or not provably harmed.
Thus it is open to him to interpret their question as one that is not so focused on novel constitutional rights.
Again, the plaintiffs choose the argument. They choose to use a statute, 42 U.S. Code § 1983, that starts:
> Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law [...]
and what they said they had been deprived of is their substantive due process rights.
The plaintiffs brought a Constitutional argument. The court ruled on the Constitutional argument.
When you file a lawsuit you basically say two things:
1. Defendant(s) did this things which harmed me.
2. This violates these specific laws and you list those laws and explain how the things from #1 violate them.
The trial court determines which of the things in #1 that you allege are true. Then, if they determine that at least some of them are true, they figure out which of the specific laws from #2 were violated.
The losing party can appeal. The appellate court takes as given whichever of the things in #1 that the trial court found to be true, and just reviews the trial court's application of the laws.
It is possible that the trial court will notice (and it they don't the defendant will bring it to their attention) that even if everything you claim in #1 is true, it would not violate any of the laws you listed in #2. The trial court will them dismiss the case unless you file an amendment that fixes the problem. The dismissal will be "without prejudice" which means you can later file again with a hopefully better drafted complaint.
The important thing here is you don't just go to courts saying "These people hurt me in this way, please punish them". You have to be specific, saying "These people broke these specific laws. Here are the things they did that broke those laws".
In this case plaintiffs said those laws were ones that had not before been interpreted as applying to their situation. The lower courts dismissed the case. The appellate court decided that those laws indeed do not apply, so dismissed the case.
They are not saying plaintiffs were not injured. Plaintiffs are free to continue legal action--they just have to sue using laws that do apply to their situation.
Yes, but the court in this case, is taking a particular interpretation that overstates the novelty of the rights claim.
The people bringing the lawsuit are not in fact asserting a right to clean water, they are asserting a right to not be deliberately poisoned by deception.
Does that mean you can build precedents with "matchfixing"? Like pay the plaintiff under the table to throw his case by presenting really bad arguments? And then subsequent cases must reference that result?
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.
The ruling expressly states that they are free to pursue whatever tort claims they want. This ruling is about violations of constitutional rights and standing to sue under 42 U.S. Code § 1983 - Civil action for deprivation of rights.
Still, it's very obviously a deprivation of right to deliberately trick people into drinking poisoned water or other poisoned things.
The right not to be deliberately poisoned doesn't disappear just because the act was achieved by leading you to the poisoned object and deceiving you that it was safe, instead of handing you an object that has been poisoned by hand.
This does not imply a right to clean water, as the judge chooses to interpret their question as asking him to recognize, and shows that his choice is in fact sufficient even if that is what they asked.
Crazy that the comments are about the title and the how the legal system should work or does not work but no one cares if the water they need to survive is drinkable or not.
The article makes it sound like this was a ruling from one judge. In fact it was a 15 judge panel. The article is talking about the majority ruling, which was joined by 10 judges. The judge they name is the judge the chief judge assigned to write the majority opinion.
The other 5 judges wrote a separate opinion dissenting in part and concurring in part.
The article did do something quite well that way too many articles on court rulings fail to do. That is link to the actual ruling [1].
It is probably best to just read that directly if you want to actually understand what is going on.
> 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.
> I'm not sure what a right to water really means.
Right to safe water. It means that the water in your kitchen faucet is expected/guaranteed to be safe to drink.
It must not have: noxious bacteria causing diarrhea, or liver parasite eggs, or mud, or mercury/heavy metals, or remains of faeces, or fracking methane, or pesticides, or medicines, or obesogens [1].
It must had been professionally filtered and treated to assure that none of those reach your home.
If you pay for water classified as "drinking water", you should not receive grey water, soapy bubbles, oily mud or anything else. This is the standard in all first country nations and I assume that it should be the same in US.
[1] And if in your small town everybody is obese, before to blame everybody for eating too much, or being lazy couch potatos, look for chemicals in the drinking water, leading to a broken satiety system, causing people to eat huge amounts of food. This is why the right to have safe drinking water is so important.
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.
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