Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/51603575
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.”
yeah i agree. also it would be extremely impractical to guarantee a universal right to clean drinking water to everyone. consider that some crazy nutjob is gonna move to the middle of the arizona desert. there’s no sane way that the government could (somewhat economically efficiently) deliver clean drinking water there regularly. that would just go against any common human sense. people shouldn’t move to the desert, then complain there’s not enough water.
guaranteeing clean drinking water can only be guaranteed in states that have actually fertile soil and enough precipitation to provide that water.