A U.S. federal court recently ruled that residents of Jackson, Mississippi, don’t have a constitutional right to truthful information from public officials, nor the right to municipal drinking water that is free of lead, a neurotoxin. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, who was appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion. The case was brought by a group of Jackson residents in 2022 who alleged that the city allowed lead to enter the municipal water system and then lied to residents saying the water was safe, though they knew it was not. “Knowing what is in our water is fundamental to protecting public health,” Caroline Leary, general counsel at the U.S.-based nonprofit Environmental Working Group, told Mongabay by email. Jackson is home to roughly 150,000 people. Nearly a quarter of them are children under 18 who are particularly vulnerable to the potentially life-long toxic impacts of lead exposure including seizures, lowered IQ, impaired brain development and even death. The plaintiffs alleged that several of their children have been diagnosed with lead poisoning and now require special educational, medical, sociological, occupational and disability services. The plaintiffs also argued that exposure to contaminated water and the failure to be informed about the risks violated their 14th amendment due process right to bodily integrity. A November 2025 ruling by a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.