I implore people to think about separation of powers. Just because something is desirable in the abstract doesn’t mean the judiciary should be doing it. Who decides what information is “accurate?” What are the implications of having the judiciary start policing the other two branches over such a fuzzy concept?

> the right to accurate information from public officials, I thought that was indeed an absolute and basic right in a democracy

In many countries, both democratic and not, police can lie (e.g. to try to get a suspect make a mistake and expose some information).

Great questions.

In saying “accurate information” there is a hidden presumption that not all government information needs to be shared. Forget about whether it’s accurate or not and who decides what’s accurate, just be maximally open

The framers discussed this in a few key ways, which resonate ALL TOO WELL with today:

Anti federalist Brutus 1 suggested that in a large republic, representatives will be too far removed from their constituents. Because citizens cannot personally observe public officials, the people "cannot be acquainted with their characters, know their motives, nor be informed of their proceedings." A lack of information would prevent citizens from holding officials accountable.

Anti federalist Centinel 1 directly warns against the manipulation of information by the wealthy elite, arguing that the public can easily be deceived by "well-born" politicians who mask their pursuit of tyranny behind noble rhetoric.

In Federalist 10 and 51 Madison argued alternatively (looks naive today) that a large, diverse republic makes it harder for corrupt politicians or factions to spread misinformation effectively across the entire nation.

In Federalist 70 Hamilton explicitly defended a single, powerful President because it provides accountability. With a single executive, the public knows exactly who to blame for bad policy or false statements, preventing officials from shifting blame or hiding behind an anonymous committee

But the Sedition Act passed only 10 years after the constitution made it illegal to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government, a restriction it could be argued that the government doesn’t even have in itself

Modern law of relevance include the Smith Mundt Act 1948 which prohibited the government from propagandizing its own people (limited to foreigners). The smith mundt “modernization” amendment crammed into NDAA 2012 did away with this restriction and now we have an explosion of govt-payroll influencers , news anchors, talking points memos etc that aren’t exactly…accurate

> But the right to accurate information from public officials, I thought that was indeed an absolute and basic right in a democracy

That's a misunderstanding on your part. You can't have a "right to accurate information" because officials might simply be wrong. "Being wrong" can't be against the law. Additionally, people simply disagree about lots of things and often there's no procedure to resolve this.

However, you can't lie under oath, or in front of Congress. But lying is not the same as providing inaccurate information. In most other contexts, lying is legal.

Time to stop considering the US a democracy? It feels the country is it’s own weird system now, not sure how to classify it but something I would call Trumpocracy. The democratic processes don’t seem to serve the people, it’s all hacks to try to use the system against itself to entrench the administration ideology (some might draw parallels to history here)

We have the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I'm not sure how the hell anyone can excersize that right without accurate info from the government.

And in all reasonable circumstances the court would agree. Poisoning the water supply is an act of war let alone an illegal act of violence.

Why is someone who wants non-contaminated drinking water incompetent?

There basically is no election fraud

In 2020 Trump admin tried very hard to find some and there attempts were thrown out in court 59/60 cases

The only thing they won on involved a Pennsylvania judge extending mail in ballot deadline beyond their authority. Not a case of fraud.

"Plugging"? You mean "fundamentally altering the self-perception of the country founded on immigration"?

Where is the constitution does it say the state can't do that?

What I'm saying though, is that he has room enough to interpret things so that a dismissal isn't necessary.

It isn't the job of the courts to make minimal rulings and avoiding all substantial questions, but to solve disputes. Here we have a case where the government has harmed people in a way that would be a tort if it had been done by anybody else, and people arguing that the government by doing so breached a right. There is presumably a right which can be interpreted as guaranteeing that people's bodies won't be messed with, or things in the US would be quite strange, so there's room to do something useful here, and the judge's choice is not forced.

This is something that is always fundamentally misunderstood. Of course, judges can extend courtesy but most modern systems are designed on pretty much the accuser arguing their case against the defender with the judge deciding based on law plus arguments presented in court.

Sorry, I think your pull quote is actually contradicting your gloss. Again, the pull quote states that it doesn’t infringe any constitutional right, not that it doesn’t infringe any rights granted for any other reason?

Does it? I think that conclusion requires observing additionally that all federal law also fails to grant a right to safe drinking water, doesn’t it?

Page 2 second paragraph."Rather, the remedy for Plaintiffs’ injuries lies in pursuing .." https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-60370-CV1.pd...

As the article says, the situation in Jackson was deplorable; and it is indeed mind-boggling (to my puny European mind) that the same constitution which grants freedom of speech and the press was also not intended to grant the right to receive only believed-correct information from the government. But the ruling, for example, is not quoted as making any mention of any federal laws? The headline may be true for all I know, but the article provides only evidence for its truth about one particular source of rights.

There is another way to look at it.

As water consumer, I have a right not to trust officials about tap water quality, and buy my own drinking water in plastic bottles!

I use Jackson example, everytime someone pushes "tap water is safe" bs!

By this logic, state employees and elected officials, who are themselves US citizens, have the right to say anything at all to the public, including blatant lies about public health issues, because there's no specific legal exception banning them from doing so.

It hasn't counted when it's "accidental" - eg: pretty much all of the US uranium leach well mining resulted in tainted water in a "yeah we know, but don't care" process.

Also radioactive tailings dam collapses and hard rock mining consequences:

On Poisoned Ground

  The largest accidental release of radioactivity in the United States did not occur in 1979 at Three-Mile Island. That very same year a collapsing dam released a flood of radioactive debris into the Navajo Nation.

'We didn't know we were poisoning ourselves': the deadly legacy of the US uranium boom

  Tsosie was one of thousands of Navajos who took jobs in the mines, starting in the 1940s. They worked without masks or ventilation to disperse the lethal radon gas, and they were never told the rocks they were handling – leetso in the Diné language, or yellow dirt – were deadly.

As the other poster mentions, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is not from the Constitution but from the Declaration of Independence. As much as it might be part of American civic lore, the Declaration of Independence is not legally binding, it is a product from two whole legal regimes before the USA's current one was founded.

> that "right to life" section of the Constitution

The US Constitution? Perhaps you are thinking of the Declaration of Independence?

Or the Fifth Amendment, formulating it in the negative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_...

I believe it is important for us to consider where rights derive from. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to protect rights that humans already have ("endowed by their Creator") and prevent the government from taking them away, or infringing on them. The law can grant ordinary civil rights, above and beyond intrinsic human rights, but if the Constitution isn't protecting the latter, then there is a problem.

> And if in your small town everybody is obese, before to blame everybody for eating too much, or being lazy couch potatos, look for chemicals in the drinking water, leading to a broken satiety system, causing people to eat huge amounts of food. This is why the right to have safe drinking water is so important.

I don't think there's any reason to assume that obesity is caused by any specific chemical found in some but not all drinking water, in such a way that explains differences in obesity rates. If that were the case we probably would've figured that out by now and would be systematically treating drinking water to remove that chemical.

It needs more qualifications IMO. "reasonable access" perhaps? I mean how would you handle someone who drives their car into the desert or climbs to the top of a mountain and demands water?

You could have assumed that since practically inception, especially when it came to treaty signing.

Governments lie all the time. This is not new.

I don't think it's fair to place all the blame on the MAGA and corporations but not on the American working class, which is the main beneficiary of the US government policy and which is electing those government.

It would be fair if American workers showed even a little compassion and compensated the rest of the world for all the damage caused by their government that they elected.

The situation where the median salary in the United States is 40 dollars while it is less than 50 CENTS elsewhere in the world is sheer madness.

Obviously, it's hard to make trillion‑dollar corporations pay, but fairness is required at ALL levels. Even people who get the minimum wage in the US have a huge fair share they have to pay to the rest of the world, where workers earn less than 50 cents an hour.

Nothing prevents you from taking a 90% tax from these Americans and distributing it to those who need the money the most. People are forced to do harmful and dangerous jobs for 50 cents an hour or less but people who elect the American government prefer to do nothing about it. Even more, they put all the blame on the corporations that are hard to act against, while pretending themselves to be a victims. It's sheer hypocrisy.

I'm sorry, but no, you're not victims, you're just as much exploiter as your corporations. An American worker earning 13 dollars an hour in terms of living standards is absurdly closer to Elon Musk than to a tantalum mine worker in the Congo who earns 22 cents an hour so that this American worker can buy a new iPhone and whine online on how some people think they crazy because they have mutilated their genitals or something.

Can’t really see how it can be reigned in and once it’s done with America it’s coming for everyone else. Australia with one nation and UK with reform for example.

My honest assessment is the tech bros felt threatened from potential regulation and decided to do use their platforms and influence to encourage more of the same destruction everywhere else. I cannot explain it any other way. Why would nearly all of them have backed the orange boy ?