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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Imagine your well becomes contaminated. That might be natural, or it might be caused by eg fracking. If the latter, do you have any rights and recourse and does it make a difference if the poisoner is state, federal or private?
(I’m curious of my own situation as a European with my own well and also not so far from a well documented case against the government because their airbase fire fighting had contaminated groundwater with PFAS.)
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.
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.
'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.
As the other poster mentions, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is not from the Constitution but from the Declaration of Independence. As much as it might be part of American civic lore, the Declaration of Independence is not legally binding, it is a product from two whole legal regimes before the USA's current one was founded.
The current court has made it clear "civic lore" is fundamental to interpreting the Constitution, though curiously this seems to only apply to certain causes.
I believe it is important for us to consider where rights derive from. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to protect rights that humans already have ("endowed by their Creator") and prevent the government from taking them away, or infringing on them. The law can grant ordinary civil rights, above and beyond intrinsic human rights, but if the Constitution isn't protecting the latter, then there is a problem.
> 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.
> 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.
I don't think there's any reason to assume that obesity is caused by any specific chemical found in some but not all drinking water, in such a way that explains differences in obesity rates. If that were the case we probably would've figured that out by now and would be systematically treating drinking water to remove that chemical.
Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration used to think the opposite when they were at charge of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Sadly EPA and FDA are being back-stabbed and slowly murdered by Republicans since 2025 (Yes, like with Voldemort, is important not to be afraid to say it loud). And the death by a thousand cuts had been surgically designed to destroy any capability to prosecute crimes related with the TSCA.
So if you live in USA you are alone on this. You better do your homework and learn as fast as you can. Scientific Journals are your friends. There is an incredible increase of unexpected knowledge about digestive regulation published since the 90's. Forget about miraculous fruits and start your journey with the adipokines.
Meanwhile the world keeps moving. In Europe, since Jan 2026, water suppliers will be required to comply with a parametric value of 2.5μg/L for BisPhenol-A in drinking water, after scientists discovered than it can leak in the hot-water faucets. People sometimes refill their teapots with hot water before to turn on the kitchen.
What is RFK up to lately? Any exciting changes? He found another racoon?
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.
> 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.
It needs more qualifications IMO. "reasonable access" perhaps? I mean how would you handle someone who drives their car into the desert or climbs to the top of a mountain and demands water?
What it needs is for us to not make up extreme scenarios to excuse not handling the obvious ones, which are extensively covered in the sources I linked you to. Obviously “reasonable” is implied; “unreasonable” is, by definition, absurd. We can only do what’s within our means.
That’s the thought behind the “Could we please not?”. Who, exactly, are those the people in your scenarios in the proverbial middle of nowhere going to “demand” water from? That is obviously not the same thing as not caring for the infrastructure under your control or letting people knowingly be contaminated.
A pretty bad article. In the American system we constantly test the boundaries of legal definition and it makes sense to test whether "how a water system is managed by a town" and "the right to bodily integrity are overlapping or not, and which way the decision falls is not aprioi obvious.
So it's normal for a judge to have decided this way. Doesn't mean "Americans don't like clear water"
The other thing annoying about the article is the racial angle. The author goes out of her way to mention that the affected town is heavily African American. She doesn't mention that the list of officials that are named as the defendants (including the mayor) are also African American. I am not sure either fact is actually significant, but it's annoying to only have half the story mentioned.
I think there is a difference between a right to safe drinking water and a right to provided water which is safe.
The government cannot have a responsibility to provide every person with water, since some people will choose to live in places which are incompatible with that mandate.
But if the government does provide water, it must be clean.
It’s just the government holding itself to its own standard —— if my bottle of Pepsi turned out to have lead in it, the EPA would go to the ends of the earth to pull every bottle from the shelf until the company fixes it. We should expect nothing less from the water in our pipes.
This is the signal the the government no longer serves the people. Delivering water is a basic government function. If they won’t make water a right, expect large numbers of dead.
If government supplied clean water hasn't been considered a right, and there's no change in that now, wouldn't you expect the number of dead in the future from this to be proportionally equal to the number of dead in the past?
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.
"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.
US courts have no problem inventing new rights for sitting US presidents. But if the people want something, they can just go die in a ditch (full of contaminated water, while being lied to about it by government officials). Classic USA.
You can have any number of mandates that aren't state or federal constitutional rights.
"Right" is the wrong word here. I think it's entirely correct that you have no "right" to clean or safe drinking water.
You have a right to persue that and all your other needs.
And you have a right to tell the government (collectively) to make drinking water a goal, collect taxes to pay for it, and issue mandates to whatever organizations needed to be responsible for making it happen.
Presumably all of that was already in effect since a long time ago, and the problem is various people not doing their jobs in good faith.
Somewhere along the way the people voted for officials who would establish safe municiple water. Somewhere along the way officials set the goals and hired the contractors and set up ongoing operation & maintainance, and that all involved some sort of official mandate with terms and goals written down. And somewhere along the way one or more people are guilty of not performing a duty they were responsible for.
We may not, but we should, have a right to good faith discharge of duties.
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.
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.
> 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.
I don't think it's fair to place all the blame on the MAGA and corporations but not on the American working class, which is the main beneficiary of the US government policy and which is electing those government.
It would be fair if American workers showed even a little compassion and compensated the rest of the world for all the damage caused by their government that they elected.
The situation where the median salary in the United States is 40 dollars while it is less than 50 CENTS elsewhere in the world is sheer madness.
Obviously, it's hard to make trillion‑dollar corporations pay, but fairness is required at ALL levels. Even people who get the minimum wage in the US have a huge fair share they have to pay to the rest of the world, where workers earn less than 50 cents an hour.
Nothing prevents you from taking a 90% tax from these Americans and distributing it to those who need the money the most. People are forced to do harmful and dangerous jobs for 50 cents an hour or less but people who elect the American government prefer to do nothing about it. Even more, they put all the blame on the corporations that are hard to act against, while pretending themselves to be a victims. It's sheer hypocrisy.
I'm sorry, but no, you're not victims, you're just as much exploiter as your corporations. An American worker earning 13 dollars an hour in terms of living standards is absurdly closer to Elon Musk than to a tantalum mine worker in the Congo who earns 22 cents an hour so that this American worker can buy a new iPhone and whine online on how some people think they crazy because they have mutilated their genitals or something.
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 ?
By political revolution. The coming, inevitable AI bubble implosion and the resulting chaos will provide for it. We are already seeing the first signs with local anti datacenter movements.
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".
> 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.
It depends on if they click the link in the article to the actual ruling and read it. If they do all they will conclude is that the article's author is completely incompetent when it comes to writing on court rulings.
First, it was a ruling by 10 judges on a panel of 15, with the other 5 judges dissenting in part and concurring in part. The judge named in the article was the judge who the chief judge assigned the task of writing up the majority opinion.
Second, the court did not say those things that the crappy article made you think they said. Briefly, they said that the harms to the plaintiffs are not covered under the specific statute that plaintiffs used, which covers violations of certain Constitutional rights.
By the way this doesn't mean the plaintiffs are done. This is just their Constitutional claim. They also sued on various other grounds, such as state laws.
Those state claims had been dragged along into federal court due to supplemental jurisdiction, and so were dismissed by the lower federal courts when the Constitutional claims were dismissed, because with the federal claims gone the federal courts no longer had jurisdiction over the state claims. Such as dismissal is "without prejudice", which means plaintiffs can refile those in state court.
Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator had come to replace water, virtually everywhere. Water, the basic component of all life, had been deemed a threat to Brawndo's profit margin.
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.
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.
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.
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 what information is “accurate?”"
Previously agencies. Now everything bubbles up to the supreme court.
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.
https://www.dougmurphylaw.com/criminal-defense/federal-crime...
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'.
Who decides what is slander or defamation?
> the right to accurate information from public officials, I thought that was indeed an absolute and basic right in a democracy
In many countries, both democratic and not, police can lie (e.g. to try to get a suspect make a mistake and expose some information).
In the USA the police can lie to you, but you can not lie back to them. To do that is a crime.
But even police in interrogation mode may not lie that will result in lead poisening.
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.
Great questions.
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)
https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy...
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
Parts of it still work, but the core is rotten.
The local democratic processes seem to be in better shape than at the federal level. At least as seen from afar
The US is returning to its pre WW2 norm. The postwar era was the exception. US democracy has long been tenuous or for the “right people”.
An 80y exception in a 250y timeline?
It may more accurately be pre-Watergate.
But yes, a lengthy period with a unifying adversary that felt like an existential threat did a lot to unify the US
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".
We have the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I'm not sure how the hell anyone can excersize that right without accurate info from the government.
And in all reasonable circumstances the court would agree. Poisoning the water supply is an act of war let alone an illegal act of violence.
100% this
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
Why is someone who wants non-contaminated drinking water incompetent?
Not everything you want - or need - is a right.
And establishing a new right is not the only way to get what you want or need.
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.
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.
Guarantee of safe water is a right (as given by EPA regulations, etc)
But it is not a constitutional right
Because putting it where it doesn't belong, without any quantification, is meaningless
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?
But this are just empty statements.
You forgot the actual argument about why this want and this way of getting it is a sign of incompetence
> Not everything you want - or need - is a right.
Ok, agreed. But safe drinking water, should maybe be one of the exceptions?
> And establishing a new right is not the only way to get what you want or need.
What's a better way to guarantee safe drinking water to everyone?
> safe drinking water, should maybe be one of the exceptions?
If we invert it to the actual reality (many places have unsafe drinking water), then we get "the right to avoid being poisoned by your government".
It sounds obvious to me that that should already be the case.
But I don't know much about water treatment. Maybe it isn't always feasible?
Do people just have to drink bottled water in some places? Or get reverse osmosis filters?
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.
> Do people just have to drink bottled water in some places
That would be really convenient for companies that sell bottled 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.
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.
Stop editing your ridiculous comment.
Rights are enshrined by society, it’s what we choose. Nothing is a right in and of itself contrary to what your comment tries to imply.
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.
> The natural state of being is freedom
That is an ideological assertion, not a fact.
Your demand is ridiculous, doubly so in a conversation about rights.
If a state official interferes with this you could have a 1983 claim.
You just got called out, don’t cry.
What is drinking water for then, if not for drinking?
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.
You did a neat rhetorical trick there where you swapped out "recognizing a right" for "guarantee".
A right is not a guarantee of perfect outcomes.
Most countries do recognize the right, though implementation is obviously challenging. The US abstained, tellingly: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/687112?ln=en
Election integrity and plugging birthright citizenship are two bigger issues that require constitution amendments.
There basically is no election fraud
In 2020 Trump admin tried very hard to find some and there attempts were thrown out in court 59/60 cases
The only thing they won on involved a Pennsylvania judge extending mail in ballot deadline beyond their authority. Not a case of fraud.
"Plugging"? You mean "fundamentally altering the self-perception of the country founded on immigration"?
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.
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.
Where is the constitution does it say the state can't do that?
Substantive due process in the 14th.
The 9th makes it clear that not all rights need to be explicitly in the text.
We would ask you to rephrase - and, if we interpreted correctly, to reread.
"We"? Yeah, okay, Your Highness.
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
The gp points out that some states, (for example, Massachusetts) opt to put this in their own constitutions
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.
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:
https://jxnwater.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/JXNWater-202...
On the other hand it means that states can just not do that and leave their citizens without clean drinking water.
Page 2 second paragraph."Rather, the remedy for Plaintiffs’ injuries lies in pursuing .." https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-60370-CV1.pd...
Yes
> 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.
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?
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.
Isn't that what the safe drinking water act is for?
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.
There is another way to look at it.
As water consumer, I have a right not to trust officials about tap water quality, and buy my own drinking water in plastic bottles!
I use Jackson example, everytime someone pushes "tap water is safe" bs!
You're not simply a consumer. You're a citizen.
I am not US citizen, I am (was) just a visitor (and consumer). I do not care about your local problems!
Jackson gov was happy to poison people to save face and money. Some other people are happy to poison people with chlorine, to save on plastics.
As a consumer, I have a right to choose whatever I feel is safe for me!
Neither am I. But presumably you're a citizen of somewhere. And that place should provide you with safe drinking water.
Yes, my goverment set maximal price on water bottles in street shops, to prevent price gauging.
Making tap water drinkable, while 99% gets used for utilities, is seen as wasteful.
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.
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.
As government representatives, they’re limited to the behavior that the Constitution grants to the government. Here’s an explainer to said Constitution you may find useful: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/sec...
After reading that, please do tell where the power to poison water and lie about it is granted to the government, and the members of that government.
They are only merely citizens outside of work, and they are indeed that free but only during those times.
When they are at work acting as the state, they are the state and their actions are limited to the rights of the state.
This should not have been something that needed explaining.
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.
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.
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.
The judge can only rule on the arguments and evidence presented in their court.
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.
Yes, but surely it's a deprivation of rights to trick someone into drinking poison?
Isn't that even how the gas chambers at some extermination camps worked? They tell you it's showers and you go in "voluntarily"?
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?
Except that supreme court justices do make their oen arguments.
This was a district court.
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.
I am out of words for this comment section.
Neckbeards arguing semantics of language, it’s like I never left Reddit.
For a long time having non sick and stinky servants was a boon but I suppose that with AI and robots the American elites no longer need the poors?
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.
[1] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-60370-CV1.pd...
It is a little weird that the government is allowed to distribute for sale a poisonous product without warning consumers, but private industry is not.
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.
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.
Imagine your well becomes contaminated. That might be natural, or it might be caused by eg fracking. If the latter, do you have any rights and recourse and does it make a difference if the poisoner is state, federal or private?
(I’m curious of my own situation as a European with my own well and also not so far from a well documented case against the government because their airbase fire fighting had contaminated groundwater with PFAS.)
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.
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
~ https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/on-poisoned-...'We didn't know we were poisoning ourselves': the deadly legacy of the US uranium boom
~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/navajo-dine-ur...As the other poster mentions, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is not from the Constitution but from the Declaration of Independence. As much as it might be part of American civic lore, the Declaration of Independence is not legally binding, it is a product from two whole legal regimes before the USA's current one was founded.
The current court has made it clear "civic lore" is fundamental to interpreting the Constitution, though curiously this seems to only apply to certain causes.
> that "right to life" section of the Constitution
The US Constitution? Perhaps you are thinking of the Declaration of Independence?
Or the Fifth Amendment, formulating it in the negative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
I believe it is important for us to consider where rights derive from. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to protect rights that humans already have ("endowed by their Creator") and prevent the government from taking them away, or infringing on them. The law can grant ordinary civil rights, above and beyond intrinsic human rights, but if the Constitution isn't protecting the latter, then there is a problem.
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.
If the ground water is contaminated with industrial waste ?
> 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.
> 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.
I don't think there's any reason to assume that obesity is caused by any specific chemical found in some but not all drinking water, in such a way that explains differences in obesity rates. If that were the case we probably would've figured that out by now and would be systematically treating drinking water to remove that chemical.
> I don't think there's any reason
Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration used to think the opposite when they were at charge of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Sadly EPA and FDA are being back-stabbed and slowly murdered by Republicans since 2025 (Yes, like with Voldemort, is important not to be afraid to say it loud). And the death by a thousand cuts had been surgically designed to destroy any capability to prosecute crimes related with the TSCA.
So if you live in USA you are alone on this. You better do your homework and learn as fast as you can. Scientific Journals are your friends. There is an incredible increase of unexpected knowledge about digestive regulation published since the 90's. Forget about miraculous fruits and start your journey with the adipokines.
Meanwhile the world keeps moving. In Europe, since Jan 2026, water suppliers will be required to comply with a parametric value of 2.5μg/L for BisPhenol-A in drinking water, after scientists discovered than it can leak in the hot-water faucets. People sometimes refill their teapots with hot water before to turn on the kitchen.
What is RFK up to lately? Any exciting changes? He found another racoon?
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.
It needs more qualifications IMO. "reasonable access" perhaps? I mean how would you handle someone who drives their car into the desert or climbs to the top of a mountain and demands water?
> It needs more qualifications IMO.
What it needs is for us to not make up extreme scenarios to excuse not handling the obvious ones, which are extensively covered in the sources I linked you to. Obviously “reasonable” is implied; “unreasonable” is, by definition, absurd. We can only do what’s within our means.
That’s the thought behind the “Could we please not?”. Who, exactly, are those the people in your scenarios in the proverbial middle of nowhere going to “demand” water from? That is obviously not the same thing as not caring for the infrastructure under your control or letting people knowingly be contaminated.
A pretty bad article. In the American system we constantly test the boundaries of legal definition and it makes sense to test whether "how a water system is managed by a town" and "the right to bodily integrity are overlapping or not, and which way the decision falls is not aprioi obvious.
So it's normal for a judge to have decided this way. Doesn't mean "Americans don't like clear water"
The other thing annoying about the article is the racial angle. The author goes out of her way to mention that the affected town is heavily African American. She doesn't mention that the list of officials that are named as the defendants (including the mayor) are also African American. I am not sure either fact is actually significant, but it's annoying to only have half the story mentioned.
I think there is a difference between a right to safe drinking water and a right to provided water which is safe.
The government cannot have a responsibility to provide every person with water, since some people will choose to live in places which are incompatible with that mandate.
But if the government does provide water, it must be clean.
It’s just the government holding itself to its own standard —— if my bottle of Pepsi turned out to have lead in it, the EPA would go to the ends of the earth to pull every bottle from the shelf until the company fixes it. We should expect nothing less from the water in our pipes.
This is the signal the the government no longer serves the people. Delivering water is a basic government function. If they won’t make water a right, expect large numbers of dead.
"basic government functions" and "your rights under the constitution" are apples and oranges.
If government supplied clean water hasn't been considered a right, and there's no change in that now, wouldn't you expect the number of dead in the future from this to be proportionally equal to the number of dead in the past?
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/docu...
Laudato Si' by Pope Francis: On Care for Our Common Home
"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.
I hope an analyst e.g. from the umbrella of Eugene Volokh will write about this case.
So from now on you can safely assume your government is lying (especially the current administration). Worrisome...
You could have assumed that since practically inception, especially when it came to treaty signing.
Governments lie all the time. This is not new.
New to me is that judges openly confirm and accept it.
US courts have no problem inventing new rights for sitting US presidents. But if the people want something, they can just go die in a ditch (full of contaminated water, while being lied to about it by government officials). Classic USA.
You can have any number of mandates that aren't state or federal constitutional rights.
"Right" is the wrong word here. I think it's entirely correct that you have no "right" to clean or safe drinking water.
You have a right to persue that and all your other needs.
And you have a right to tell the government (collectively) to make drinking water a goal, collect taxes to pay for it, and issue mandates to whatever organizations needed to be responsible for making it happen.
Presumably all of that was already in effect since a long time ago, and the problem is various people not doing their jobs in good faith.
Somewhere along the way the people voted for officials who would establish safe municiple water. Somewhere along the way officials set the goals and hired the contractors and set up ongoing operation & maintainance, and that all involved some sort of official mandate with terms and goals written down. And somewhere along the way one or more people are guilty of not performing a duty they were responsible for.
We may not, but we should, have a right to good faith discharge of duties.
The armchair lawyer in me thinks that this is as clearcut state issue as possible. Why is federal even involved?
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.
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.
> 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.
I don't think it's fair to place all the blame on the MAGA and corporations but not on the American working class, which is the main beneficiary of the US government policy and which is electing those government.
It would be fair if American workers showed even a little compassion and compensated the rest of the world for all the damage caused by their government that they elected.
The situation where the median salary in the United States is 40 dollars while it is less than 50 CENTS elsewhere in the world is sheer madness.
Obviously, it's hard to make trillion‑dollar corporations pay, but fairness is required at ALL levels. Even people who get the minimum wage in the US have a huge fair share they have to pay to the rest of the world, where workers earn less than 50 cents an hour.
Nothing prevents you from taking a 90% tax from these Americans and distributing it to those who need the money the most. People are forced to do harmful and dangerous jobs for 50 cents an hour or less but people who elect the American government prefer to do nothing about it. Even more, they put all the blame on the corporations that are hard to act against, while pretending themselves to be a victims. It's sheer hypocrisy.
I'm sorry, but no, you're not victims, you're just as much exploiter as your corporations. An American worker earning 13 dollars an hour in terms of living standards is absurdly closer to Elon Musk than to a tantalum mine worker in the Congo who earns 22 cents an hour so that this American worker can buy a new iPhone and whine online on how some people think they crazy because they have mutilated their genitals or something.
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 ?
> Can’t really see how it can be reigned in
By political revolution. The coming, inevitable AI bubble implosion and the resulting chaos will provide for it. We are already seeing the first signs with local anti datacenter movements.
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".
> 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.
It depends on if they click the link in the article to the actual ruling and read it. If they do all they will conclude is that the article's author is completely incompetent when it comes to writing on court rulings.
First, it was a ruling by 10 judges on a panel of 15, with the other 5 judges dissenting in part and concurring in part. The judge named in the article was the judge who the chief judge assigned the task of writing up the majority opinion.
Second, the court did not say those things that the crappy article made you think they said. Briefly, they said that the harms to the plaintiffs are not covered under the specific statute that plaintiffs used, which covers violations of certain Constitutional rights.
By the way this doesn't mean the plaintiffs are done. This is just their Constitutional claim. They also sued on various other grounds, such as state laws.
Those state claims had been dragged along into federal court due to supplemental jurisdiction, and so were dismissed by the lower federal courts when the Constitutional claims were dismissed, because with the federal claims gone the federal courts no longer had jurisdiction over the state claims. Such as dismissal is "without prejudice", which means plaintiffs can refile those in state court.
Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator had come to replace water, virtually everywhere. Water, the basic component of all life, had been deemed a threat to Brawndo's profit margin.