A Trump-appointed judge also said Americans have no “constitutional right to truthful information” during a public health crisis.
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2022, says the contamination violated Jacksonians’ constitutional right to bodily integrity. Donald Trump-appointed judge Kurt Engelhardt disagreed. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt said.
“Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information. These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”
Ofc not. This colony was founded by literal enslavers. It’s hard to enslave a comfortable population with their basic needs met. No water, no food, no shelter, no healthcare… Instead it’s “freeze peach” and corporate personhood.
Oh, it was a conservative deciding this. This tracks.
Because fuck the common good, right?
Not great but honestly not suprised.
Then what is the point of governance?
Yeah lets wrap this US gov up at this point. No right to clean water and the truth lol.
You will drink sludge and accept our lies like the good little American sheep you are.
In some parts of the world, people are thinking about UBI.
In other parts of the world, having safe drinking water is put into question.
Elections have consequences, everyone who stayed home and allowed Trump to be elected to two terms has enabled this.
I honestly don’t know if the US will actually be able to recover from those 6 (and counting) years, as an Aussie it feels like we’re watching the equivalent of the Fall of Rome in real time.
That bastard has managed to isolate you from your allies, line his pockets with billions of dollars, nearly bankrupt your country, destroy your military credibility, pollute your water, air & food, roll back your rights, and so much more.
It will take at least a generation to undo this damage, and I don’t think there’s enough political will to do what would need to be done to arrest this decline.
You will likely fall into oligarchy, to become another Russia in my lifetime. Just another regional brute, living off the fear and intimidation you were able to impose on your glory years.
I think it depends on how you define “recover”. America will never be what it was.
“old” america is never coming back. it never was. and by ‘old’ i mean like cold war or obama era, not racist sexist 30’s/40’s/50’s america.
this ‘new’/currrent america might stick around for a bit, but it will be strained. it will get to a point where this new america fully breaks and ceases to exist (full civil war 2) and the country will be broken up. either into 2 new countries or breaking completely and all the states becoming their own country, which will invoke more war as states (and even other countries) fight each other for land and resources.
‘mostly’ world paece was amazing while it lasted. but billionairs didn’t make enough money
America will never be what it was.
What it was isn’t as “great” as the stories Americans tell themselves.
They need to build back better.
they want flint to be repeated in every state.
This is pretty fucking obvious to anyone who has received a water bill.
our public utility used to include reports from regular testing in with the bills… they make them available online now (cost saving, it was a specially-printed multi-page insert before), but it’s still public information.
A water bill is so the treatment plants can continue running at utmost capacity.
Should that just be tied into municipal taxes? Maybe. You’re not paying for clean water, you’re paying for the system and the people who help keep it clean.
You are paying for wealth extraction. Ftfy
That’s not the same, dumbass
Foreshadowing
It shouldn’t have been a “right to safe drinking water”, it’s an assumption of risk issue. The default setting in the US for a few generations is that the tap water is safe to drink. This reeeally smells like a malicious ruling.
It honestly sounds like the judge has a point. The plaintiffs contended that there was a constitutional right. There doesn’t appear to be, in Mississippi.
That depends if you agree with the Declaration of Independence. Do you think that all men are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? If you do, then you think that they are entitled to non-poisoned water, or at least for the government to make a reasonable effort to provide said water.
But look, this is something that’s hard for American court systems to grasp. In the United States when people talk about rights, they typically only think about the Bill of Rights. And that’s a subset of our rights.
Entitled to does not me provided. It means not blocked, or not taken away. You could argue that by not telling the people, that they blocked their right, but that’s a bit of a stretch. Essentially the peolle where always free to buy clean water from the store, or go to some other source.
If it meant provide… healthcare would be free, as that is part of the pursuit of life.
What this may be, is fraud. They charged the people for the water. I am sure somewhere in various publications they call it safe. If the levels were higher than some publication with reasonable authority on the subject calls safe, that would be fraud. The article however didn’t go into those details. I suspect that while the levels were considered by many to be unsafe, there probably lacks an authority on the exact levels that are safe. We ran into this with pur school district. They tested and found some levels were higher than typical guidance, but that “official” unsafe levels weren’t present. So they called it safe. Only people who dug into the data realized they were sugar coating it. But they weren’t legally lieing.
Yeah this is total bullshit and all, but The Declaration of Independence is not a legally binding document. It’s irrelevant to the situation, unfortunately. You can’t walk into a court and cite the Declaration of Independence as law or precedent.
I mean, I guess you could, but no judge would take you seriously because that’s not how jurisprudence works in the US.
Land of the Free motherfuckers!
“Oh look at me, I’m an entitled American. I want water to drink and to not be lied to. Wha Wha Wha”
You give people this and they’ll start asking for healthcare next instead of just dying in the street with pride.
Bunch of greedy entitled fucks.
Who invited Steven Miller to this thread?
Steven Miller has probably never been invited to anything. He just pops out from around a corner or behind a bush and your heart stops beating for a second.
*Nestle enters the chat
I’m sure Coke and Pepsi will also be happy to sell you bottled water priced at whatever the market will bear.
