A federal appeals court has used a decades-long water crisis in one of the Blackest cities in America to rule that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee Americans the right to clean and safe drinking water.
The Sept. 4 ruling came even after Jackson, Mississippi, residents alleged officials knew the water was contaminated and assured the public it was safe. To this point, the appellate court also ruled that the Constitution does not offer citizens the “right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
The ruling signals that Black residents may face the most serious consequences of unsafe or failing water systems while having limited ability to seek a remedy through the Constitution. At the same time, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has already determined that the city could not receive support through the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
What is happening in Jackson matters because federal data shows Black communities are more likely than white communities to be served by water systems with health-based Safe Drinking Water Act violations. Research has also found that systems in communities with larger Black populations take much longer to be fixed or improved.
“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 is more than 80% Black and has a poverty rate that is 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 lawsuit that spurred the federal appeals court ruling was first brought by Jackson residents who alleged that city officials knowingly allowed lead-contaminated water to reach their homes and then misled the public about whether it was safe to drink. The suit also alleged that state authorities violated civil rights law by repeatedly sending federal money earmarked for drinking water safety to white communities rather than Jackson.
The plaintiffs sued Jackson and former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in 2022, arguing that the city’s actions violated their constitutional right to bodily integrity under the 14th Amendment. They sought damages and changes to how the city manages and communicates about its water system.
“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 said in 2022.
In the Sept. 4 ruling, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of the case. Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote that while access to safe water is “important,” it is not a right “deeply rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition,” the standard the court used to decide whether it is protected by the Constitution.
Jackson residents also argued that the alleged false assurances by officials about the water violated their right to make informed decisions about their health. Engelhardt rejected that claim, writing 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.”
Engelhardt acknowledged the alleged harm, but wrote: “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing.”
Judge Catharina Haynes dissented in part, arguing that the residents had plausibly alleged that Jackson violated their right to bodily integrity by knowingly placing them in 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 about the ruling.
In response to the ruling, John Horhn, Jackson’s mayor, said in a statement: “We are pleased that the Fifth Circuit upheld the dismissal of these claims. The City remains committed to the health, safety, and well-being of every Jackson resident.”
What exactly is wrong with Jackson’s water?
As Capital B has documented, Jackson’s water crisis has plagued the city long before it made national headlines in 2021. Residents like Brooke Floyd, who as a child watched her grandmother complain about the water decades ago, have said that the water contamination has impacted their families for generations.
“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 after the ruling. “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.”
Others, like Gwendolyn Reed-Davis, have spent years driving long distances to family members’ homes to wash clothes and bathe.
Reed-Davis attributes her school-age children’s learning problems and her kidney infection to decades of exposure to the city’s contaminated water. Dozens of studies have shown that lead exposure leads to cognitive impairment for life, even decades after initial exposure. And the biggest factor for lead poisoning in America is race, namely being Black, even more so than poverty.
Time and time again, Floyd said, Jackson has been left to fend for itself and had its issues downplayed by government bodies.
“Isn’t that how it goes? The oppressor telling the oppressed that they haven’t been discriminated against,” she told Capital B in 2024.
The failures are the result of decades of deferred maintenance, aging treatment equipment, leaking and breaking water mains, staffing shortages, and a shrinking revenue base that left the city unable to keep pace with needed repairs.
The EPA warned in a March 2020 emergency order that conditions in Jackson’s system presented an “imminent and substantial endangerment” to residents, citing problems with treatment and distribution infrastructure. Then, in February 2021, severe winter weather froze equipment and ruptured lines, leaving tens of thousands of residents without running water for weeks. A year later, flooding and failures at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant triggered another citywide emergency, prompting federal intervention and the appointment of a third-party manager to rebuild the system.
As the city attempts to strengthen its water system, residents are increasingly being asked to finance the improvements. JXN Water, the federally appointed manager overseeing the city’s water and sewer system, says it has improved operations and brought in more revenue, but the utility remains under federal oversight.
In March, a court-approved rate increase of about 12% raised the average residential water-and-sewer bill by roughly $8.88 a month, to about $88. JXN Water’s financial plan now proposes an added 10% increase in spring 2027, followed by proposed hikes of 9% in 2028 and 8% in 2029. That adds up for a city with so many residents living in poverty.
“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 in response to the cascading rulings and water issues. “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.”
