The full US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that the US Constitution does not give Jackson residents a right to clean drinking water or accurate information from public officials, affirming dismissal of their lawsuit over alleged lead contamination in the city’s water.
That ruling lands in a case residents pushed as a constitutional challenge to what they say was deliberate contamination of the water they drank, and it shuts down the federal theory at the center of the fight. Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote the majority opinion and said there was no historical basis for finding those rights under the due process clause.
Clarence Webster III, who represented the City of Jackson, called the decision “one of the most significant constitutional rulings the Fifth Circuit will issue this year.” He said, “We are pleased the en banc court affirmed the City’s position and provided important guidance on the limits of constitutional liability.”
Engelhardt’s opinion said the Constitution “does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” and noted that residents can still pursue tort claims, elect officials who will better manage the water system, and petition representatives for other solutions. He also said the right to bodily integrity covers situations such as sexual assault by a police officer and forced medication of prisoners, but that mismanagement of a water system is “wholly different.”
The ruling also rejects the residents’ effort to tie the case to constitutional due process cases involving informed consent, which Engelhardt said do not create a right to accurate information from public officials. He added that city officials would still be protected by qualified immunity because no clearly established right was violated.
The decision was not unanimous. Judge Catharina Haynes said the claims must be taken as true at this stage and said the residents should at least be allowed discovery. She wrote that the complaint’s allegations mirror in various ways one of the worst public health crises in recent American history, comparing them to the Flint water crisis.
The Jackson case had already moved through a sharp turn this year, when a divided Fifth Circuit panel revived the residents’ claim against the City of Jackson over their right to bodily autonomy. The full court later took up the case and vacated that panel ruling, leaving Engelhardt’s view to carry the day with nine other Republican-appointed members joining him against the court’s four liberal members.
For Jackson residents, the practical effect is clear: the federal constitutional route is closed, even as the underlying claims about lead-contaminated drinking water remain part of a dispute the city has denied. Engelhardt’s opinion leaves the fight to other legal and political channels, but it does not say whether any new filing will follow or when.
