A Trump-appointed judge also said Americans have no “constitutional right to truthful information” during a public health crisis.
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2022, says the contamination violated Jacksonians’ constitutional right to bodily integrity. Donald Trump-appointed judge Kurt Engelhardt disagreed. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt said.
“Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information. These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”
Not sure why I have to be the person in this thread to explain basic civics to everyone, but “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is from the Declaration of Independence, it is not in the US Constitution.
The Declaration is not law, it was just a declaration. You can’t cite it like this, that’s not how it works.
It’s actually in section 1 of the 14th amendment:
Life, liberty, or property. No pursuit of happiness to be found.
You still can’t have any of those if you don’t have drinkable water.
Look, I’m not going to defend this bullshit decision, but humans survived millennia without regulated, clean, drinking water. Yes, some of the lucky ones had life, liberty, and maybe even some property.
They were drinking low % beer because it was safer. For literally thousands of years.
It was an absolute nightmare, and anyone with a working understanding of history knows exactly why we need regulated, clean, drinking water.
But unfortunately, here we are. A legislature that has abdicated it’s responsibility in prostrate to a mad king. With a Supreme Court with at least four justices, off the top of my head, that will have no issue poisoning our drinking water. And two more who could go either way.
The problem here is that things like beer will protect you from water born disease, but it will not offer any protection against lead, mercury, and many other heavy metals. Many of these pollutants are either new, or never occurred in as significant amounts as they do now. Also our world is getting hotter, and as a result, dehydration will become even more dangerous than before. The last thing you will want to drink during a heatwave is alcohol, even in small quantities. If you’re unlucky like me and can’t have alcohol, are especially sensitive to some of these metals, and dehydrate especially easily, then you’re royally screwed.
Yeah absolutely… We’ve gone so long without having to worry about sooooo much water-borne shit, that people don’t even realize.
Can’t wait for the mainstream return of dysentery and cholera