This is a case that should drive the environmentalist left mad.
A federal appeals court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a right to clean municipal drinking water or accurate information from public officials about water contamination.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Friday against four residents of Jackson, Mississippi, who alleged that city officials exposed them to lead and other contaminants through the city's troubled water system and misled residents about whether the water was safe to drink.
The ruling came at the pleading stage, meaning the court was considering whether the residents' allegations, accepted as true for purposes of the motion, were enough to state a constitutional claim. The majority acknowledged the seriousness of those allegations.
But the issue is whether or not the city residents' legitimate grievances constituted a constitutional issue. Jackson's water system has faced years of problems, including water containing lead, E. coli and other bacteria, repeated boil-water notices and periods when residents were left without running water.
“Government officials are expected to be honest with their constituents, especially when the constituents' safety is at risk,” Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the majority.
But the court concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause does not establish a constitutional right to receive accurate information from government officials about contaminants in municipal water.
“The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt wrote.
It similarly rejected the residents' argument that exposure to contaminated water violated their constitutional right to bodily integrity. That certainly would have been an eye-opening ruling, given the vaccine mandates under the prior administration.
The majority said previous cases involving the constitutional right to bodily integrity have generally concerned direct government intrusions such as forced medication, sexual assault by government officials and other forms of physical violation. The alleged mismanagement of a municipal water system, the court concluded, was different.
“Defendants' actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information,” the majority wrote. “These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”
The ruling reverses the course of an earlier decision from a three-judge Fifth Circuit panel. In November 2025, that panel found that the residents had plausibly alleged a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment right to bodily integrity and allowed that portion of the lawsuit to proceed. The decision was later vacated when the full Fifth Circuit agreed to rehear the case.
The en banc majority also declined to follow decisions from the Sixth Circuit arising from the Flint, Michigan water crisis, where contaminated-water claims were allowed to proceed under a bodily-integrity theory.
Judge Catharina Haynes concurred in part and dissented in part. Haynes argued that the Jackson residents' allegations, which had to be accepted as true at this stage, closely resembled what occurred in Flint and were sufficient to allow portions of the lawsuit to continue.
She also argued that the Fifth Circuit should recognize the state-created-danger doctrine rather than continue leaving the issue unresolved. Haynes also argued that the Fifth Circuit should recognize the “state-created danger” doctrine, which can allow constitutional claims when government officials allegedly create or substantially increase a person's exposure to danger.
The majority did not adopt that theory. The court said its ruling does not mean Jackson residents are without other possible remedies. The majority pointed to state-law tort claims, regulatory enforcement, legislation and the political process as potential avenues for addressing government failures involving public water systems.
Clarence Webster III, an attorney representing Jackson, called the ruling “one of the most significant constitutional rulings the Fifth Circuit will issue this year,” according to Bloomberg Law.
“We are pleased the en banc court affirmed the City's position and provided important guidance on the limits of constitutional liability,” Webster said.
The decision comes amid continued federal involvement in Jackson's water system. The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency sued the city in 2022 over alleged violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act, and federal oversight and efforts to stabilize the system have continued.
A separate lawsuit brought by the NAACP and two Jackson residents also remains pending. That case accuses Mississippi officials of racial discrimination in the distribution and administration of federal infrastructure funding intended for water-system improvements. It involves different claims and was not resolved by Friday's Fifth Circuit decision.
The Fifth Circuit's ruling in Sterling v. City of Jackson is therefore limited to the constitutional claims brought by the four residents.
The court did not determine whether or not people should have access to clean water. Instead, it held that the residents had not established a right to clean municipal water or accurate information about its safety under the Fourteenth Amendment.
That's an important distinction because Americans' rights are enumerated under the U.S. Constitution and should not be stretched beyond this legal foundation. There can be legal harm done to individuals without there being a constitutional case that would entail the courts effectively setting national policy.
Access to clean water, therefore, is not a matter of "equal rights." It's a matter of people demanding a good or service and bringing a tort claims or civil suits for damages if they are harmed or defrauded. This is why we have lawsuits against externalities. The legal process of redress matters, as this Fifth Circuit ruling aptly demonstrates.
