(The Center Square) – The full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel and rejected constitutional claims from Jackson residents who say city officials exposed them to contaminated drinking water and misled them about its safety.
The en banc court ruled Friday that the residents cannot pursue their claims under the U.S. Constitution, saying the 14th Amendment does not establish a constitutional right to be free from exposure to contaminated municipal water or a right to receive accurate information from public officials about contaminants in the water.
The lawsuit was filed by four Jackson residents who say the city’s water system exposed them to lead and other contaminants. They also say officials knew the water was unsafe but told residents it was safe to drink.
The court’s ruling does not determine whether those allegations were true. The case was dismissed at the pleading stage, meaning the court accepted the plaintiffs’ well-pleaded factual allegations as true for purposes of determining whether they had stated a constitutional claim.
The majority acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations, noting that Jackson’s water system in recent years produced water containing lead, E. coli and other bacteria, allegedly violated the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and EPA regulations, left residents without water for weeks and resulted in numerous boil-water notices.
“Government officials are expected to be honest with their constituents, especially when the constituents’ safety is at risk,” the majority wrote.
But the court said that expectation does not create a constitutional right to accurate information from government officials about contaminants in municipal drinking water.
The majority also said the Constitution does not establish a right to be free from exposure to contaminated municipal water.
“These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right,” the court wrote.
The court said residents instead may pursue other remedies, including tort claims, political remedies and state or federal regulatory enforcement.
The ruling reverses a November 2025 decision by a three-judge 5th Circuit panel, which had found the residents plausibly said a violation of their 14th Amendment right to bodily integrity and allowed that portion of the lawsuit to proceed.
Judge James Graves dissented from the en banc decision. He said the residents should have been allowed to proceed with their claims and said the allegations could implicate the constitutional right to bodily integrity.
The case comes against the backdrop of years of problems with Jackson’s water system. The U.S. Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency sued the city in 2022, saying there were violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Federal oversight and efforts to stabilize the system remain ongoing.
A separate legal battle over Jackson’s water infrastructure also remains active.
The NAACP and two Jackson residents sued Mississippi officials in August 2025, saying the state discriminated against the majority-Black city in the distribution of American Rescue Plan Act funds intended for infrastructure improvements.
The lawsuit centers on more than $35 million awarded to Jackson through the state’s Municipality and County Water Infrastructure grant program. The plaintiffs say state officials imposed additional requirements on Jackson that were not imposed on other communities and withheld funds that could have been used to address the city’s water problems.
The case survived an initial attempt by the state to have it dismissed. In May, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate ruled the plaintiffs had standing to bring the lawsuit and said the case would proceed, although the state was allowed to continue arguing other grounds for dismissal.
As of the May hearing, the plaintiffs said Jackson had received about $4 million of the more than $35 million awarded through the program, leaving roughly $32 million at issue. The state argued the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries resulted from Jackson’s longstanding infrastructure problems rather than the state’s handling of the ARPA funds.
The NAACP’s lawsuit presents a different legal question from the case rejected by the Fifth Circuit. The 5th Circuit case sought to establish constitutional protections concerning contaminated water and government information about water safety. The NAACP case says racial discrimination in the state’s allocation and administration of federal water-infrastructure funding.
The 5th Circuit’s ruling therefore closes one avenue of constitutional litigation for the Jackson residents, while the separate NAACP case over water funding continues in federal court.