Sept. 7, 2026Updated Sept. 8, 2026, 7:54 a.m. ET
A federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee the right to clean drinking water in a Sept. 4 decision rejecting Jackson, Mississippi, residents’ lawsuit over the city’s lead-contaminated water system.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling dismissing residents’ 2022 lawsuit. The plaintiffs, Priscilla Sterling, Raine Becker, Shawn Miller and John Bennett, alleged that the city knowingly allowed residents to drink unsafe water.
They argued that the water contamination violated their constitutional right to bodily integrity under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause.
In the majority decision, Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote that while the deprivation of clean water was “grievous,” it did “not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”
“We are skeptical that the right to not be harmed by lead-contaminated water fits within the right to bodily integrity, and Plaintiffs point us to no historical tradition or Supreme Court precedent convincing us,” he wrote.
He also said there was no constitutional right to “truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
A right to clean water?
The lawsuit against the City of Jackson stemmed from testing conducted by the Mississippi State Health Department between 2010 and 2013 showing rising levels of lead in the water. The four plaintiffs argued that the city failed to take steps to prevent further lead from entering the water supply and gave residents false assurance that the water was safe.
The judge found the lead exposure that resulted from the city’s mismanagement was “wholly different” from past examples when governments infringed on a person’s right to bodily integrity, including “from forced surgery, involuntary medicating, and assault.”
“The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt wrote.
Rather, he said residents should take other paths to redress, including electing better representatives and petitioning the government for remedies.
While the right to clean water isn’t included in the U.S. Constitution, or in the Mississippi state Constitution, several states, including California and Virginia, have protected access to safe water.
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