A Federal Court Says the Government Can Lie to You. That Backlash Is Coming.
When a federal appeals court says the government has no constitutional duty to tell the truth during a public health emergency, the first reaction is disbelief. The second is a darker question: What, exactly, is government for?
That question hangs over a decision last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which threw out a lawsuit against Jackson, Mississippi. Residents had alleged the city knowingly allowed them to drink lead-contaminated water, violating their bodily integrity and their right to accurate information from officials. Judge Kurt Engelhardt, appointed by President Donald Trump, rejected that claim. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” he wrote, adding that the harms, “while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”
The ruling landed during a week of voting-rights attacks, redistricting fights, and reports that the president apparently offered $5,000 bribes to voters. It deserved more attention, especially Engelhardt’s conclusion that there is no “constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
Is that really where we are? Government can let people be poisoned and then lie about it, and citizens are supposed to accept it? The question echoes beyond Mississippi. Newly released documents from New York City suggest residents were misled about air quality after the 9/11 attacks. Mayor Zohran Mamdani released 170,000 documents before the 25th anniversary, detailing how the public was repeatedly assured that the air around the collapsed towers was safe. It was not. Those exposed now face elevated risks of cardiovascular and respiratory disease, as well as cancer.
“We were dying with every breath we took down there. What we learned is that the city knew it,” Lt. James Brosi, president of New York City’s Uniformed Fire Officers Association, told CNN. The disclosure is even more alarming alongside Washington Post reporting that the number of 9/11 survivors receiving aid for cancer has roughly tripled over the past five years.
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Ground Zero was unquestionably a public health crisis. But under Engelhardt’s logic, it does not matter that the Environmental Protection Agency told New Yorkers not to worry and to breathe the air. That makes you wonder what the word “protection” is supposed to mean in the Environmental Protection Agency’s name. It also explains why Mamdani’s opponents are attacking him over 9/11: for the easily distracted, it is a useful deflection from their own failures to protect Americans.
The bottom line is absurd. It is 2026, and we are debating whether the Constitution protects a right to clean air and water—a need near the base of Maslow’s hierarchy. We should be arguing about internet access or education as human rights. I am more ambivalent about those than about healthcare or free speech, which I consider undeniable human rights. But clean air and water? That debate should not exist.
This is not the norm everywhere. Mother Jones reports that in at least nine U.S. states and more than a dozen other countries, clean drinking water is a protected right. Uruguay and South Africa enshrine it in their constitutions. New York’s constitution, after a 2021 amendment, states that “each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.” Massachusetts has protected “the right to clean air and water” since 1972. That may be cold comfort in Mississippi, but the institutional-racism dimension cannot be ignored: Jackson is more than 80 percent Black, and its poverty rate is more than double the national average. The lines are not hard to read.
Engelhardt may be technically correct that no explicit law says bodily integrity is protected in this context. He is still wrong in a broader sense. If government has no responsibility to ensure safe access to air and water—and no duty to tell the truth about it—then what is government for? Judges who chip away at the foundations of a functioning society seem not to realize that they are threatening its ability to function at all. People will not tolerate being poisoned or lied to forever. The backlash could be severe.
Maybe telling the truth and enforcing basic public health standards is hard. The alternative is self-destruction.
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