Nah, headline is optimistic actually: no right to clean water, to water tests, or to the truth about the tests if they occur. No right to healthcare, schools, or even deliverable mail either. But surely some of these are just the kind of thing you might expect as an absolute minimum everywhere if you have to pay taxes.
We can have both, and the former precludes the idea that plaintiffs and judges can simply invent new fundamental rights that require enormous sums of money and labor to implement without any democratically designed framework because they're a good idea.
We have a route to do this, it's legislation and regulation. Note that in this particular case, while these things did not work perfectly - the Jackson water system had a lot of well-reported problems, and the lawsuit was filed in response to that - there's been hundreds of millions poured into remediating the problem. It is not simply being "ignored". People are not doing "nothing." The EPA, MSDH, and Jackson authorities have been working on the problem, not ignoring it because it's not a Constitutional right. In late 2025 the work resulted in the Jackson water supply once again meeting Safe Drinking Water Act requirements.
Here is the latest comprehensive water quality report, on a reporting website that the DOJ, EPA, and courts forced JXN to create:
https://jxnwater.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/JXNWater-202...
> what do you want to defend
Accuracy, and in this case people correctly knowing that their rights stem from some source (if they do! I don’t know the legal facts) or knowing the appropriate venue in which to campaign for them, rather than incorrectly believing that they don’t have rights and/or can’t get them.
> why do you want to defend it
Because words still have meanings, and people pretending they don’t, while screaming in ever more shrill tones at each other, is extremely tiresome, and the Internet is full of it.
Also it's kind of a moot point if federal law has not granted that right and does not seem likely to.
> Rather, the remedy for Plaintiffs’ injuries lies in pursuing tort claims, electing representatives who will better manage the public-water system, and petitioning their representatives for other remedies.
which is easier said than done.
From outside of US this seems extremely ass backwards.
I think the bigger deal is that the people of Jackson were lied to and this sets the precedent that there is no recourse. It's not like someone in Flint knowingly drank contaminated water, the city withheld the fact that their water was contaminated with unsafe levels of lead.
It's not unique in that.
Bad-faith pollution of truth is a new legal concept, and only a few countries have explicit legal protections against it.
The UK had a case a few years ago where this was tested, the judgement was "Well, if we expected our politicians to tell the truth, where would that end, nyuck nyuck nyuck?"
It's actually a tacit assumption that politicians and representatives lie, the media lie, and this is how things are.
There are proposals in the UK and Wales to change this. My guess is they won't get anywhere near explicit approval in the UK. They might in the Welsh Senedd.
Meanwhile the US has Fox claiming that it's an 'entertainment' channel, and no one should expect truth or honesty from it.
As water consumer, I have a right not to trust officials about tap water quality, and buy my own drinking water in plastic bottles!
I use Jackson example, everytime someone pushes "tap water is safe" bs!
Jackson gov was happy to poison people to save face and money. Some other people are happy to poison people with chlorine, to save on plastics.
As a consumer, I have a right to choose whatever I feel is safe for me!
Making tap water drinkable, while 99% gets used for utilities, is seen as wasteful.
The correct question is: Where does the US Constitution grant governments the power to poison and lie to residents?
This isn’t some pedantry but fundamental American civics. The US Constitution explicitly does not enumerate rights. It’s default-allow, explicit-deny regarding human rights. It’s rather alarming that anyone would think it’s default-deny, explicit-allow. That’s not how the Constitution is written.
After reading that, please do tell where the power to poison water and lie about it is granted to the government, and the members of that government.
When they are at work acting as the state, they are the state and their actions are limited to the rights of the state.
This should not have been something that needed explaining.
I looked a bit in the early morning to see what arguments were effective in the Flint case which has similiar municipal activities... The case history there was too complex for me. Many suits in federal and state court, lots of federal suits dismissed for various reasons (mostly lack of standing if I understood the summary) and then a settlement in federal court that resolved all (most?) of the suits. I didn't really see a discussion of the legal theory from which liability arose, just what the remedy was and if it the settlement was reasonable for minors and unrepresented parties.
Finding an argument that pleases the court and/or appealing to a higher court in the hopes that your argument pleases them is pendantry and american civics.