A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump told residents of Jackson, Mississippi on Friday that they have no right to drinking water untainted by lead, according to a new report.

Kurt Engelhardt, a judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, which was accused of knowingly allowing residents to drink contaminated water for six months in 2015, Mother Jones reported Saturday.

"Defendants' actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information," Engelhardt wrote. "These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right."

The ruling highlights a broader gap in legal protections. Nine U.S. states and more than a dozen countries protect citizens' right to clean drinking water — in New York and Massachusetts, that right is embedded in state constitutions, the report noted.

The question of what counts as a "deeply rooted" right draws on the Supreme Court's substantive due process framework, under which courts recognize only rights implicit in the nation's history and tradition — a standard that has historically left claims to basic environmental and health protections outside constitutional bounds. Jackson's water system has faced repeated crises in recent years, including a 2022 failure that left the majority-Black city without reliable running water for weeks and prompted an EPA intervention and a federally appointed interim manager for the system.

But the Fifth Circuit ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not protect the residents of Jackson, who claimed the city government not only withheld information about the contamination but exacerbated the problem by instructing people to boil their water — a measure that kills bacteria but concentrates lead. Lead exposure is linked to developmental harm in children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says no level of lead in blood is known to be safe.

Engelhardt told the plaintiffs they had no constitutional right to "truthful information from officials during a public health crisis."

The decision came the same day that Trump's Environmental Protection Agency released a rule that Mother Jones noted dilutes the Clean Water Act.

The ruling is likely to be appealed, and similar claims over contaminated drinking water — including litigation arising from the crisis in Flint, Michigan — have continued to work through state and federal courts, keeping the question of official accountability for water safety in active legal dispute.