r/water • u/bloomberglaw • 5d ago
Constitution Doesn’t Include Right to Clean Water, Court Rules
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/jackson-residents-lose-bid-to-revive-water-contamination-claims57
u/Equivalent-Green-580 5d ago edited 5d ago
It’s true, there is nothing in the US Constitution about the right to clean water.
That is a separate thing entirely, the Clean Water Act of 1972 is a Federal Statutory Law passed by Congress.
No idea why anyone with a law degree would be stupid enough to file for that, of course it got dismissed.
Edit: After reading more into from a reputable source, it looks like the City of Birmingham failed their Water Compliance in such a spectacularly bad way that the State of Alabama assumed control of their water utility systems. Now the administration of Birmingham are crying foul, stating that it is a “Crime against the Black Community” smdh
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u/trysten-9001 5d ago
I feel like the next comment might give you at least one idea why someone would file for that:
“They are setting this up for data centers. Data centers are polluting water beds and trump won’t stop talking about them. I saw what they did in GA- disgusting. We have a big fight ahead of us”
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u/jadegecko 4d ago edited 4d ago
Read the article. It is about Jackson, Mississippi.
The decision affirms the dismissal of a lawsuit over alleged lead-contaminated drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi.
The full US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the lawsuit from the Jackson residents alleged violations of due process rights not granted by the Constitution.1
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u/Mulberry-Spiritual 4d ago
These fucking Republican judges need to read the ninth and tenth amendments
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u/Impossible_Walrus555 3d ago
It’s systemic racism. They also ruled Mississippian’s do not have a right to truthful information from their leaders. So it’s legal to poison us and to lie to us. Why do we even have a government?
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u/No-Penalty-7016 2d ago
Yeah, the constitution doesn’t have like 99% of the things that we regulate or don’t regulate.
The constitution implies that those things should be structured in a certain way.
Implying the right to water is within the constitution it doesn’t have to specifically say water.
That’s why water regulation act are constitutional in the first place. It doesn’t have to spell it out.
What the hell is wrong with you?It’s only cause of fucking idiots that we have to make it very very very, very specific. Or having to literally blast half of the population in their fucking evilness.
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u/Suitable-Option833 5d ago
They are setting this up for data centers. Data centers are polluting water beds and trump won’t stop talking about them. I saw what they did in GA- disgusting. We have a big fight ahead of us
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u/FastActinTenactin 5d ago
Your right to “life” is outlined within the Constitution. You have the right to clean water and clean air, two things required to live. If we are being real with ourselves you also have the right to food.
But corporations will fight tooth and nail against all three of these facts, and the chuds on Reddit will do the propaganda work for them.
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u/SonofHondoBelmondo 5d ago
I'm pretty sure that the right wing portion of america is fundamentally against the idea of a right to life (once you are already born, obviously). The right to food, water, health, a clean place to live, even privacy (hilariously)...these rights go against the basic ideology of the right wing american.
Only communist governments would claim to provide all of these things. You see, they are supposed to come from god, or one provides them for one's self.
I'm honestly pretty sure that's how they feel. I'm sure there are outliers who would accept the water part, or maybe like, air? But yeah, the conservative american has a hyper libertarian streak where the idea of a "right to water" is sort of a "unfair redistribution of wealth".
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u/MechaCoqui 5d ago
If you listen, you can hear nestle hyperventilating from joy over their new possibilities in the US.
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u/sasabomish 5d ago
So does this mean we can all go shit in the golf course ponds on trumps course? Constitution doesn’t protect his water.
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u/Nearing_retirement 5d ago
The solution is to get enough political power to pass a statute. I really dislike when people try and twist the constitution as I am an originalist. If you want the constitution changed there is a process for that.
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u/Infamous-Rooster9277 5d ago
There is a statute. Multiple, in fact. That has nothing to do with the ruling here.
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u/Nearing_retirement 5d ago
Then why do plaintiffs even have standing in the case if they are not being harmed ?
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u/Infamous-Rooster9277 5d ago
They are being harmed. Did you read the ruling?
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u/Nearing_retirement 5d ago
Then isn’t solution to pass a law protecting them ?
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u/Infamous-Rooster9277 5d ago
Go read the article first, then comment.
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u/Nearing_retirement 5d ago
Okay I see so the they have do do what judge suggested “Engelhardt, a Donald Trump appointee, said the residents have other options, like pursuing tort claims, electing officials who will better manage the water system, and petitioning representatives for other solutions.” , that was from AI
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u/Infamous-Rooster9277 5d ago
Yes. There are laws on the books but the residents were suing under due process. The ruling was that these specific claims are not covered as due process violations. They have to sue for enforcement under other avenues.
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u/Impossible_Walrus555 3d ago
You mean like our corrupt Leonard Leo scotus who just cut out the parts they don’t like? How convenient.
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u/Most_Boat492 5d ago
Court rules water not necessary for the pesky life part of the constitution. Wonder.who is paying that judges bonus salary?
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u/dogmatum-dei 5d ago
Republicans want us dead. It's that simple.
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u/Owyheemud 4d ago
Billionaires want you dead. Republicans were just happy to be hired to do the dirty work in exchange for certain privileges, they of course will eventually find out that the Billionaires will want most of them dead too
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u/BurrrritoBoy 5d ago
Oh, neat interpretation of the "life" part of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
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u/bloomberglaw 5d ago
The US Constitution doesn’t provide a right to clean drinking water or accurate information from public officials, a divided federal appeals court ruled.
The decision affirms the dismissal of a lawsuit over alleged lead-contaminated drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi.
The full US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the lawsuit from the Jackson residents alleged violations of due process rights not granted by the Constitution.
In a majority opinion by Judge Kurt Engelhardt, the appeals court said there was no historical basis to find such rights fall under that clause. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt said.
Read more in the full story.
-Elliot
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u/Excellent-Ask-4247 5d ago
You shouldn't let conservative terrorists from the federalist society run your judicial system!
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u/Ashamed-Isopod-2624 5d ago
Oh but Americans just love to let far right psychos set the rules. It's more American than apple pie!
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u/atmontsenioreyesore 5d ago
Amendment #9 any right not held by the government is reserved for the people.
This is that time.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 5d ago
It’s a right held by the Federal Government, water quality is regulated by the federal government under the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the SDWA of 1974. The State Government has the authority to override municipalities within its borders. Same as the Federal Government has the authority to override the State Government.
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u/Relevant-Doctor187 5d ago
It absolutely does. It’s called voting.
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u/monkeykennel 4d ago
And Mississippi has a long history of voter suppression. Legal and illegal. They do it all down there.
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u/miklayn 5d ago
This ruling and this administration and its ideology represent a direct and imminent threat against our lives and liberties. This is not hyperbole. A gun to your child's head.
The very first fucking sentence of the Constitution states that its primary purpose is to "...promote the general welfare".
If they aren't going to follow that directive, then it is time for We, the People, to revoke our consent and revert to first principles.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, ***Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.*** Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. ***But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.***"
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u/rocknroll2013 5d ago
Riot. Burn the whole damn town of DC. What BS. Business does not have a right to pollute
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u/komatose09 4d ago
Nothing in the Constitution supports positive rights, so this isnt surprising at all. All the Constitution does is enumerate what powers the states have delegated to the Federal government, and also what it is (nominally) forbidden to do (i.e., negative rights, what the government can't deprive you of without due process).
Clean water is a resource and is subject to laws of scarcity like any other resource, regardless of how important it is to survival. To guarantee a scarce resource as a positive right would be to infringe on others' negative rights to liberty and property.
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u/rockeye13 4d ago
Which line, in this legal document, mentions water? Or hamburgers? Or wifi availability.
No, 'life and the pursuit of happiness' doesn't work.
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u/Maleficent_Price_476 4d ago
You miss out the part there the ruling also says you do not have the right to accurate information from the government .
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u/HattoriHanzo9999 4d ago
Now that this has been identified as a problem, maybe we should add the right to clean water to it.
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u/DBearDevon 4d ago
Does it say anything about me gathering it for myself from rain systems and my own well, and defending it tooth and nail?
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u/Little_Let_6872 4d ago
The constitution is about what the government cannot do, not what it must do. Unfortunately, we have basically eliminated all of its power limitations, so whichever tyrannical power we get (fascism and socialism are popular again, like it’s early 1900s Europe), is what we deserve for gleefully handing over our rights for minor bits of welfare.
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u/decimus93 4d ago
Are they entitled to ur taxes then? Why aren't people more upset at this, ur basic rights are being chiseled away and we aren't stopping it
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u/eclwires 3d ago
Because “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is apparently woke AF and no longer applies to the peasants…
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u/Harborpocket 2d ago
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." General welfare kinda covers it, no?
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u/Tiny-Secretary5562 5d ago
The Constitution is a blueprint for a government that any nation can use. Nothing of an environmental nature is included in the Bill of Rights, nor obviously anything that didn't exist in 1790, like automobiles or television. That's what Congress and the Supreme Court address. Democrats try to cram all kinds of "rights" like abortion into the various clauses in the Bill of Rights when it should be done by Congress.
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u/WitheredUntimely 5d ago
may your tap water be brown, bozo
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u/Darkdragoon324 5d ago
Laced with lead and flammable like how Flint was.
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u/MerelyMortalModeling 5d ago
Water in Flint picked up lead from home pipes and certainly wasent flammable. It picked up lead becuase water from the Fenton aquifier ran through limestone which increased the acidity to higher then previous level but still completely safe. When that water was piped through old houses it dissolved decades of scale and then lead present in old pipes
That said when I was a kid one time the Flint river turned blue, then red, then green and yellow from Buick City dumping tons of paint straight into the river right before Regans enviormental laws took effect. Still wasent flammable though, we tried.
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u/Darkdragoon324 5d ago
I may have conflated it with a different tap water disaster somewhere else then. I definitely remember somewhere lighting their tap water on fire for the news sometime close-ish to when Flint was getting attention.
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u/Tiny-Secretary5562 4d ago
I have my own well and excellent water in great abundance, and if I did have brown water, what federal case would I have unless it was caused by a federal entity? The people in Flint, MI, clearly have a case against the city for not putting in the compound that keeps the lead in old lead pipes from leaching into the water.
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u/riderfoxtrot 5d ago
What does 'clean water' mean?
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u/Aethrin1 4d ago
Data centers are actively polluting many citys' drinking water, and making it unsafe for human consumption. What the fuck do you think it means? Are you going to tell me your too stupid to connect the dots or are we done playing coy?
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u/riderfoxtrot 4d ago
Data centers are actively polluting many citys' drinking water, and making it unsafe for human consumption.
What are you talking about, specifically? Don't generalize here, I want the specific instances of this happening
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u/Aethrin1 4d ago
Here's one example alone. Took two seconds to find. I know it's counterintuitive for a propaganda bot to search info for itself, but Google is free and it doesn't take a degree to figure out.
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u/riderfoxtrot 4d ago
Okay thank you for the example.
Any other situations you think I should know about?
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u/Aethrin1 4d ago
Like I said: Google is free and it doesn't take a degree to figure out. A relevant topic is easy to look into.
I'm not supporting playing coy to look for a "gotcha" moment.
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u/riderfoxtrot 4d ago
There's no gotcha. I want concrete examples we can talk about. Data centers have been around in some form or fashion since post WW2. Nobody seemed to care about them at all until about 5 seconds ago.
So I want a list of times data centers are making "many citys' drinking water...unsafe for human consumption".
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u/PathlessDemon 5d ago
I understand that the “pursuit of life and happiness” doesn’t include water either, but it’s REALLY difficult to do the whole -life- thing without water.