A federal appeals court has determined that the United States Constitution does not provide a guarantee for the right to clean drinking water. In a decision issued on Sept. 4, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a 2022 lawsuit brought by Jackson, Mississippi, residents Priscilla Sterling, Raine Becker, Shawn Miller, and John Bennett. The plaintiffs had alleged that the city knowingly permitted residents to consume unsafe, lead-contaminated water.
The legal challenge claimed that the exposure to contaminated water violated the residents' constitutional right to bodily integrity, as protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Furthermore, the plaintiffs argued that the city failed to implement necessary measures to prevent lead from entering the water supply and provided false assurances regarding the safety of the water, a situation they contended also violated a right to receive truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.
Writing for the majority, Judge Kurt Engelhardt characterized the deprivation of clean water as “grievous” but concluded that it did “not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.” The court expressed skepticism that the right to avoid harm from lead-contaminated water aligns with the right to bodily integrity, noting that the plaintiffs failed to provide historical tradition or Supreme Court precedent to support their claim. Judge Engelhardt further dismissed the notion of a constitutional right to receive truthful information from government officials during a public health emergency.
The court distinguished the lead exposure resulting from city mismanagement from other instances where the government has been found to infringe upon bodily integrity, such as cases involving forced surgery, involuntary medicating, or assault. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt wrote. He suggested that residents seeking remedies should pursue other avenues, including petitioning the government or electing different representatives. While the U.S. Constitution and the Mississippi state Constitution do not explicitly protect the right to clean water, some states, such as California and Virginia, have established protections for access to safe water.
The lawsuit against the City of Jackson stemmed from testing conducted by the Mississippi State Health Department between 2010 and 2013 showing rising levels of lead in the water. The four plaintiffs argued that the city failed to take steps to prevent further lead from entering the water supply and gave residents fals
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