A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump told residents of Jackson, Mississippi on Friday they have no right to water untainted by lead, according to a new report.
Kurt Engelhardt, a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge, affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against their city, accused of knowingly allowing residents drink the contaminated water for six months in 2015, Mother Jones reported Saturday.
“Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information,” he said. “These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”
Nine U.S. states and more than a dozen countries protect citizens’ right to clean drinking water — in New York and Massachusetts it is embedded into state constitutions, the report noted.
But the Fifth Circuit ruled the U.S. constitution does not protect the residents of Jackson, who claimed the city government not only withheld information but exacerbated the problem by instructing people to boil water — which kills bacteria but concentrates lead.
Engelhardt told these citizens they had no constitutional right to “truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
Mother Jones also noted Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency on Friday released a rule that dilutes the Clean Water Act.
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