- cross-posted to:
- usnews@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- usnews@beehaw.org
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.”
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It falls under the life part of consti rights, he’s obtuse.
When some rights you should have aren’t given to you, you need to do something to make sure you take them.
What about the water youre paying for that had the implied value of being safe. Being defrauded by a group selling the water is a crime and every customer should have access to what they are paying for.
Foreshadowing
If clear drinking water was a human right in the US, then it would be covered by the Constitution as well.
Pursuit of happiness seemsbto include proper hydration for most.
If something was clearly, precisely defined in the constitution it would still be worthless if some group of rich cunts came to a consensus that it would be better for them if the courts were to interpret it differently.
The US legal system has a terminal case of corruption.
Is that a pun? Is it so good that I almost missed it? Was it on purpose? I am impressed.
The Constitution is already covered by yellow water and brown streaks.
Long past overdue for a refresh.
This chud only thinks rights exist if they’re written on piece paper by someone 250 years ago. 🫵😂
What a fucking loser.
they want flint to be repeated in every state.
It honestly sounds like the judge has a point. The plaintiffs contended that there was a constitutional right. There doesn’t appear to be, in Mississippi.
That depends if you agree with the Declaration of Independence. Do you think that all men are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? If you do, then you think that they are entitled to non-poisoned water, or at least for the government to make a reasonable effort to provide said water.
But look, this is something that’s hard for American court systems to grasp. In the United States when people talk about rights, they typically only think about the Bill of Rights. And that’s a subset of our rights.
Yeah this is total bullshit and all, but The Declaration of Independence is not a legally binding document. It’s irrelevant to the situation, unfortunately. You can’t walk into a court and cite the Declaration of Independence as law or precedent.
I mean, I guess you could, but no judge would take you seriously because that’s not how jurisprudence works in the US.
Entitled to does not me provided. It means not blocked, or not taken away. You could argue that by not telling the people, that they blocked their right, but that’s a bit of a stretch. Essentially the peolle where always free to buy clean water from the store, or go to some other source.
If it meant provide… healthcare would be free, as that is part of the pursuit of life.
What this may be, is fraud. They charged the people for the water. I am sure somewhere in various publications they call it safe. If the levels were higher than some publication with reasonable authority on the subject calls safe, that would be fraud. The article however didn’t go into those details. I suspect that while the levels were considered by many to be unsafe, there probably lacks an authority on the exact levels that are safe. We ran into this with pur school district. They tested and found some levels were higher than typical guidance, but that “official” unsafe levels weren’t present. So they called it safe. Only people who dug into the data realized they were sugar coating it. But they weren’t legally lieing.
Land of the Free motherfuckers!
Elections have consequences, everyone who stayed home and allowed Trump to be elected to two terms has enabled this.
I honestly don’t know if the US will actually be able to recover from those 6 (and counting) years, as an Aussie it feels like we’re watching the equivalent of the Fall of Rome in real time.
That bastard has managed to isolate you from your allies, line his pockets with billions of dollars, nearly bankrupt your country, destroy your military credibility, pollute your water, air & food, roll back your rights, and so much more.
It will take at least a generation to undo this damage, and I don’t think there’s enough political will to do what would need to be done to arrest this decline.
You will likely fall into oligarchy, to become another Russia in my lifetime. Just another regional brute, living off the fear and intimidation you were able to impose on your glory years.
I think it depends on how you define “recover”. America will never be what it was.
“old” america is never coming back. it never was. and by ‘old’ i mean like cold war or obama era, not racist sexist 30’s/40’s/50’s america.
this ‘new’/currrent america might stick around for a bit, but it will be strained. it will get to a point where this new america fully breaks and ceases to exist (full civil war 2) and the country will be broken up. either into 2 new countries or breaking completely and all the states becoming their own country, which will invoke more war as states (and even other countries) fight each other for land and resources.
‘mostly’ world paece was amazing while it lasted. but billionairs didn’t make enough money
America will never be what it was.
What it was isn’t as “great” as the stories Americans tell themselves.
They need to build back better.
Yeah, current America was never great, domineering, but not great. USA 2.0 will be better for the world, and hopefully better for Americans too.
This is pretty fucking obvious to anyone who has received a water bill.
A water bill is so the treatment plants can continue running at utmost capacity.
Should that just be tied into municipal taxes? Maybe. You’re not paying for clean water, you’re paying for the system and the people who help keep it clean.
You are paying for wealth extraction. Ftfy
I mean, I own my home and I don’t have a water bill so I’m personally not paying for anything. But it’s the same as power, your Internet, etc. You’re paying for not only the item you’re receiving but also for the service it gets to you, and the service to keep it up and running.
I pay for a plumber to come and fix my pipes. The money I pay them doesn’t just pay for the service I received, the company also uses some of that to hire more people, improve their training, upgrade their equipment, etc.
That’s not the same, dumbass
our public utility used to include reports from regular testing in with the bills… they make them available online now (cost saving, it was a specially-printed multi-page insert before), but it’s still public information.
It shouldn’t have been a “right to safe drinking water”, it’s an assumption of risk issue. The default setting in the US for a few generations is that the tap water is safe to drink. This reeeally smells like a malicious ruling.
In some parts of the world, people are thinking about UBI.
In other parts of the world, having safe drinking water is put into question.
Well, he’s sorta right. It’s not explicitly in the text (though, one could argue it would maybe come from the 9th Amendment). The basis for the Clean Water Act and the EPA would arise out of Congress’s power to promote a general welfare combined with regulating interstate commerce.
If water was a right, anyone could have as much of it as they want to use for pretty much any reason.
That’s not what a right to clean drinking water means.
That’s not even what “access to water is a human right” means.
Please stop being a dumbass.
Rights are inalienable, meaning nobody can take them from you and they exist forever in perpetuity. Water is a finite resource. The two ideas are incompatible. I’m not making a statement about what policy should be implemented, just what words should be used.
Water isn’t a finite resource, genius.
It’s actually infinitely recycled. You drink, you piss it out. Sure, for your lifespan you will be holding some 50-90kg in your body at any time, but that water goes right back into the ecosystem.
Similarly, any freshwater that goes into the seas and oceans end up circling back into freshwater due to evaporation -> clouds -> rainfall. You know, the water cycle? Third grade science class material?
Furthermore, the right to clear water doesn’t mean one person or groups of people get to hog all the water. It should be based on need - and a person dying of dehydration should always be higher priority than some dumb AI datacenter used by millions of idiots to get wrong answers reinforced…
Water isn’t a finite resource, genius.
Lol, too stupid to argue with.
you mean like animal agriculture and data centers do? moronic.
That’s not how that works. Following your logic, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would mean anyone could do anything they want if it makes them happy, which is obviously not true.
A person’s life and liberty and pursuit of happiness aren’t shared resources existing in finite amounts. Water is. I’m not making a statement about what policy should be implemented, just what words should be used. Rights are ephemeral and unalienable, and water is very much neither of those.
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