A federal appeals court has delivered a consequential legal blow to residents of Jackson, Mississippi, ruling that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee Americans a fundamental right to clean and safe drinking water.
The decision, handed down by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on September 4, stems from a decades-long public health crisis in the capital city. Residents had brought forth a sweeping lawsuit alleging that local officials not only allowed dangerous contaminants like lead to flood the city’s water supply, but actively misled the public about whether the water was safe to consume. However, the appellate court went even further in its legal interpretation, ruling that the Constitution also does not offer citizens any codified "right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis."
The ruling highlights a stark reality for majority-Black communities across the United States: while they frequently face the most severe consequences of crumbling infrastructure, systemic contamination, and failing public water systems, they have increasingly limited avenues to seek legal remedies through constitutional law. This judicial setback arrives on the heels of a determination by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the city could not secure necessary financial support or intervention through the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
The struggles in Jackson reflect a broader, systemic pattern nationwide. According to federal data, predominantly Black communities are statistically more vulnerable to health-based violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act than predominantly white neighborhoods. Furthermore, comprehensive research has repeatedly demonstrated that public water infrastructure systems located in communities with higher Black populations endure longer delays before receiving funding, approvals, or necessary repairs.
Danyelle Holmes, a senior national organizer with Mississippi’s Poor People’s Campaign, expressed deep frustration over the trajectory of the legal battle.
"Jackson residents did everything this country tells poor people to do," Holmes said. "They organized, they testified, they boiled their water, they filed suit, they trusted the courts. And at every step the answer has been no."
Jackson is a city where more than 80 percent of the population is Black, and its local poverty rate stands at more than double the national average. Holmes emphasized that the ruling sends a chilling message to the city’s residents.
"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," she added.
How Did the Court Come to This Decision?
The landmark lawsuit that ultimately reached the Fifth Circuit was initially filed in 2022 by a group of Jackson residents. The plaintiffs contended that city officials knowingly allowed lead-contaminated water to flow directly into homes while publicly offering false assurances that the water was safe to drink. Additionally, the suit alleged that state authorities violated civil rights laws by repeatedly diverting federal funding specifically earmarked for drinking water safety away from Jackson and toward predominantly white communities.
The plaintiffs named the City of Jackson and former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in the litigation, arguing that the city’s profound failures violated their constitutional right to bodily integrity, which is protected under the 14th Amendment. They sought financial damages alongside court-ordered reforms to overhaul 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," residents stated in court filings in 2022. "At times, some have had no water at all."
In the September 4 ruling, a majority of the Fifth Circuit panel affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. Writing for the majority, Judge Kurt Engelhardt acknowledged that access to safe water is undoubtedly "important," but concluded that it does not qualify as a right "deeply rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition"—the stringent legal standard applied by courts to determine whether a right warrants constitutional protection.
The plaintiffs had also argued that the alleged false assurances made by public officials violated their constitutional liberty to make informed decisions regarding their own health and bodily safety. Judge Engelhardt dismissed that argument as well, drawing a sharp legal distinction between active government intervention and systemic deception. He wrote 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 Judge Engelhardt acknowledged the undeniable harm experienced by the community, he concluded that "the Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing."
The decision was not unanimous. Judge Catharina Haynes penned a partial dissent, arguing that the plaintiffs had successfully and plausibly alleged that the city violated their right to bodily integrity by knowingly placing them in persistent physical danger.
"They did not say the water was safe," Holmes said, summarizing the court’s stance. "They said even if everything the residents alleged is true, the Constitution owes them nothing."
In response to the appellate decision, Jackson Mayor John Horhn released a statement addressing the outcome.
"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?
The catastrophic infrastructure failures plaguing Jackson are not a recent phenomenon; the water crisis had been compounding for years before it captured national attention in 2021. Longtime residents, such as Brooke Floyd, have watched generations of their families grapple with contaminated water. Floyd recalls watching her grandmother voice complaints about the water’s poor quality decades ago.
Following the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, Floyd expressed skepticism about the equity of the American judicial system.
"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 Capital B. "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 have had to completely restructure their daily routines to survive. Gwendolyn Reed-Davis has spent years driving substantial distances to the homes of relatives merely to wash clothes and bathe. Reed-Davis firmly attributes her school-age children’s ongoing learning difficulties and her own chronic kidney infections to decades of involuntary exposure to the city’s tainted water supply.
A vast body of scientific and medical research has consistently demonstrated that childhood lead exposure leads to irreversible cognitive impairment, with impacts persisting decades after the initial exposure. Public health data indicates that race—specifically being Black—remains a more significant predictor of lead poisoning risk in the United States than household income or poverty.
For many residents, the crisis has been compounded by a persistent lack of government accountability.
"Isn’t that how it goes? The oppressor telling the oppressed that they haven’t been discriminated against," Floyd noted.
The systemic failures in Jackson stem from decades of deferred maintenance, aging treatment facilities, frequent breaks in aging water mains, chronic staffing shortages, and a shrinking municipal tax base that left local government entirely unequipped to keep pace with necessary infrastructure investments.
Federal oversight bodies flagged these vulnerabilities years before total system collapse. In March 2020, the EPA issued an emergency administrative order warning that conditions inside Jackson’s water system presented an "imminent and substantial endangerment" to the health of residents, explicitly highlighting critical flaws in both treatment and distribution networks.
The situation boiled over in February 2021, when severe winter weather swept across the region, freezing critical equipment and rupturing water lines. The freeze left tens of thousands of residents completely without running water for weeks. Just over a year later, heavy rainfall 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 stabilizing and rebuilding the crumbling utility.
As the city continues its arduous journey toward infrastructure recovery, financial burdens are increasingly being passed down to the local populace. JXN Water, the federally appointed entity overseeing the daily operations of the water and sewer systems, reports that it has successfully improved operational efficiency and increased revenue generation. Nevertheless, the utility remains heavily embedded 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. Furthermore, JXN Water’s long-term financial roadmap proposes an additional 10 percent rate hike in the spring of 2027, followed by subsequent proposed increases of 9 percent in 2028 and 8 percent in 2029. These escalating costs present a severe challenge for a community where a significant portion of the population lives below the federal poverty line.
Despite the mounting legal setbacks and financial pressures, community advocates emphasize that their fight for safe water and basic human dignity will continue outside the courtroom.
"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. "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."