A federal appeals court has delivered a consequential legal blow to residents of Jackson, Mississippi, ruling that the United States Constitution does not guarantee citizens a fundamental right to clean and safe drinking water.
The decision, handed down on September 4, stems from a long-running, decades-long water crisis in the capital city, which is one of the predominantly Black metropolitan areas in the United States. In its ruling, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals went further, determining that the Constitution also fails to offer citizens a protected "right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis."
The appellate ruling highlights a growing legal and systemic chasm: Black residents and marginalized communities often bear the most severe consequences of crumbling, hazardous municipal water systems while holding severely restricted avenues for legal remedy through federal constitutional law. This judicial setback arrives as the federal Environmental Protection Agency has already concluded that the city’s plight could not secure support or relief through the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
The situation unfolding in Jackson serves as a stark focal point for a broader national issue. Federal data consistently demonstrates that Black communities across the United States are statistically more likely than white communities to be served by water systems that rack up health-based Safe Drinking Water Act violations. Furthermore, external academic research has established that water infrastructure systems in municipalities with larger Black populations experience significantly longer delays before receiving necessary repairs, investments, or government upgrades.
"Jackson residents did everything this country tells poor people to do. They organized, they testified, they boiled their water, they filed suit, they trusted the courts. And at every step the answer has been no," said Danyelle Holmes, a senior national organizer with Mississippi’s Poor People’s Campaign.
Jackson’s demographic and economic profile underscores the severity of the crisis. The city is more than 80 percent Black, and its local poverty rate stands at more than double the national average.
"What it signals is that the law has told a majority-Black capital city that its suffering is real but its remedy does not exist," Holmes added.
How did the court come to this decision?
The litigation that prompted the federal appeals court ruling was initially launched by Jackson residents who asserted that city officials knowingly permitted lead-contaminated water to flow directly into local homes while actively misleading the public regarding its safety. The legal action also contended that state authorities violated federal civil rights laws by repeatedly diverting federal funds specifically earmarked for drinking water safety toward predominantly white communities instead of Jackson.
The plaintiffs originally filed their lawsuit against the city of Jackson and former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in 2022. Their legal arguments centered on the premise that the city’s actions and failures infringed upon their constitutional right to bodily integrity under the 14th Amendment. Through the lawsuit, they sought financial damages alongside structural mandates to transform how the municipal government manages and communicates about its beleaguered water infrastructure.
"Nearly all of the residents of Jackson have watched brackish, dirty, impure, and undrinkable water trickle from their taps. At times, some have had no water at all," Jackson residents stated in court documents filed in 2022.
In the September 4 ruling, a panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals formally affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case entirely. Writing for the majority, Judge Kurt Engelhardt acknowledged that access to safe water is undeniably "important," but asserted that it does not constitute a right "deeply rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition"—the strict legal standard required by the court to determine whether a right receives explicit protection under the Constitution.
The plaintiffs had also argued that false assurances propagated by local officials regarding water quality violated their constitutional liberty to make informed decisions concerning their own health and physical well-being. Judge Engelhardt rejected that assertion as well, writing in his opinion that "lying about the presence of lead in the water is a far cry from the state’s physically extracting evidence from a criminal suspect or conducting an invasive medical procedure without consent."
While recognizing the tangible harms suffered by the community, Judge Engelhardt concluded that "the Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing."
The decision was not unanimous. Judge Catharina Haynes dissented in part from the majority opinion, arguing that the resident plaintiffs had successfully and plausibly alleged that Jackson officials violated their fundamental right to bodily integrity by knowingly and recklessly placing them in severe physical danger.
"They did not say the water was safe. They said even if everything the residents alleged is true, the Constitution owes them nothing," Holmes said, summarizing the implications of the court’s stance.
In the wake of the ruling, Jackson Mayor John Horhn issued a public statement addressing the outcome of the litigation. "We are pleased that the Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of these claims," Horhn said. "The City remains committed to the health, safety, and well-being of every Jackson resident."
What exactly is wrong with Jackson’s water?
Jackson’s water crisis is not a recent phenomenon, having plagued the municipality long before systemic failures erupted into national headlines in 2021. Local residents, such as Brooke Floyd—who grew up watching her grandmother voice complaints about the foul water decades prior—have pointed out that the contamination has cast a generational shadow over families in the city.
"I do think the ruling would’ve been different if the majority of our city looked different, was in a different tax bracket, and had a different ZIP code, but alas, we probably wouldn’t have had the problems to begin with," Floyd told reporters after the appellate decision was handed down. "The problem the rest of America needs to worry about is, while they were making sure not to guarantee me my rights, they were quietly taking yours, too."
Other residents, including Gwendolyn Reed-Davis, have endured years of logistical hardships, routinely driving long distances to the homes of relatives just to wash clothes and bathe.
Reed-Davis connects her school-age children’s persistent learning difficulties and her own battle with a serious kidney infection to decades of unavoidable daily exposure to the city’s tainted water supply. Numerous scientific and medical studies published over the years have established that lead exposure causes permanent cognitive impairment, with effects lasting decades past the initial exposure window. Furthermore, public health research indicates that race—specifically being Black—serves as an even greater statistical predictor of lead poisoning risk in the United States than household poverty.
Time and time again, Floyd noted, Jackson has been left to fend for itself while governmental bodies downplay the depth of its crisis.
"Isn’t that how it goes? The oppressor telling the oppressed that they haven’t been discriminated against," she noted.
The infrastructural failures gripping Jackson are the cumulative result of decades of deferred maintenance, aging treatment machinery, leaking and frequently breaking water mains, persistent staffing shortages, and a dwindling municipal revenue base that has left the city perpetually unable to keep pace with necessary structural repairs.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency order in March 2020 warning that operational conditions inside Jackson’s system represented an "imminent and substantial endangerment" to the health of residents, explicitly highlighting deep vulnerabilities in treatment and distribution networks. Those warnings materialized in February 2021 when a severe winter storm froze vital equipment and ruptured pipelines, leaving tens of thousands of residents without running water for weeks. Barely a year later, heavy flooding and catastrophic failures at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant triggered yet another citywide emergency, forcing federal intervention and the eventual appointment of a third-party manager tasked with rebuilding the utility.
As the city works under federal oversight to stabilize and strengthen its water grid, the financial burden is increasingly being shifted onto the shoulders of residents. JXN Water, the federally appointed organization managing the water and sewer systems, reports that it has successfully improved operational efficiency and increased revenue generation. However, the utility remains firmly under federal court oversight.
In March, a court-approved rate increase of approximately 12 percent raised the average residential water and sewer bill by roughly $8.88 a month, bringing the typical monthly cost to about $88. JXN Water’s long-term financial roadmap proposes an additional 10 percent rate hike scheduled for the spring of 2027, followed by further proposed increases of 9 percent in 2028 and 8 percent in 2029. These escalating costs present a severe challenge for a city where a significant portion of the population lives below the poverty line.
"We are organizing, we are marching to the polls, and we are not waiting on a court to tell us our lives are worth clean water," Holmes said, reflecting on the compounding weight of the judicial rulings and ongoing infrastructure challenges. "As the Poor People’s Campaign teaches us, this is not about left and right. It is about right and wrong, and everybody knows which one Jackson has received."