Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

usatoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 178 posts

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#161

Post by ceejayoz »

db48x wrote: post #159
ceejayoz wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the legal theory is the government can shorten your life as long as they don't outright end it? That seems like a novel one.

Oh no, they can end your life too. But only after due process. Thus a death sentence requires a trial and appeals and so on and so forth and takes ages to actually get to the execution. Just keep in mind that chronic lead poisoning does not cause death or even shorten lives. It only reduces IQ and causes behavioral and cognitive disabilities. If you want safe drinking water you have to provide it yourself. Either dig…

> Just keep in mind that chronic lead poisoning does not cause death or even shorten lives.

This is patently false.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11069331/

> Oh no, they can end your life too. But only after due process.

Yes, that's the point. There was not any sort of due process here.

> If you want safe drinking water you have to provide it yourself. Either dig your own well, or band together with your neighbors to have municipal water.

This was municipal water.

> If you subscribe to a municipal water system then the responsibility rests on the municipality.

And this ruling is letting them escape the responsibility.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#162

Post by AustinDev »

ceejayoz wrote: post #106
AustinDev wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're an idealogical zealot but, for anyone else reading. I do find it interesting that the only laws I can find limiting the arming of private vessels were with respect to arming them and then sending them off to fight in foreign wars.[1] [1] Neutrality Act of 1794, §§3–4, 1 Stat. 381, 383

Vessels is a bit of an odd thing to focus on, frankly. I'm largely not allowed to own a fully armed tank, fighter jet, or howitzer. (With a few strictly controlled exceptions; https://www.skiutah.com/blog/authors/lexi/last-gunners-the-c... )

Cannon-armed Vessels were the pinnacle of military technology at the time the Bill of Rights was authored.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#163

Post by ceejayoz »

AustinDev wrote: post #162
ceejayoz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vessels is a bit of an odd thing to focus on, frankly. I'm largely not allowed to own a fully armed tank, fighter jet, or howitzer. (With a few strictly controlled exceptions; https://www.skiutah.com/blog/authors/lexi/last-gunners-the-c... )

Cannon-armed Vessels were the pinnacle of military technology at the time the Bill of Rights was authored.

And?

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#164

Post by db48x »

ceejayoz wrote: post #161
db48x wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, they can end your life too. But only after due process. Thus a death sentence requires a trial and appeals and so on and so forth and takes ages to actually get to the execution. Just keep in mind that chronic lead poisoning does not cause death or even shorten lives. It only reduces IQ and causes behavioral and cognitive disabilities. If you want safe drinking water you have to provide it yourself. Either dig…

> Just keep in mind that chronic lead poisoning does not cause death or even shorten lives. This is patently false. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11069331/ > Oh no, they can end your life too. But only after due process. Yes, that's the point. There was not any sort of due process here. > If you want safe drinking water you have to provide it yourself. Either dig your own well, or band together with your n…

You’re hopeless.

And do you not understand the process? The plaintiff brings a lawsuit arguing that the defendant did a bad thing. They make multiple claims about laws that were broken. The judge may throw out any or all of those claims. Most lawsuits lose at least one. In this case one of the claims was that the municipal water district violated their 14th amendment rights. That one got thrown out. The plaintiffs appealed and the this is their appeal being denied.

I haven’t actually read the original lawsuit, but there’s no way that they were dumb enough to make only that one claim against the water district. They’ll still have their claims about negligence and so on and so forth. It’ll go to trial eventually, or the district will settle. Losing this claim does not let the district escape their responsibility.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#165

Post by schoen »

db48x wrote: post #164
ceejayoz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just keep in mind that chronic lead poisoning does not cause death or even shorten lives. This is patently false. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11069331/ > Oh no, they can end your life too. But only after due process. Yes, that's the point. There was not any sort of due process here. > If you want safe drinking water you have to provide it yourself. Either dig your own well, or band together with your n…

You’re hopeless. And do you not understand the process? The plaintiff brings a lawsuit arguing that the defendant did a bad thing. They make multiple claims about laws that were broken. The judge may throw out any or all of those claims. Most lawsuits lose at least one. In this case one of the claims was that the municipal water district violated their 14th amendment rights. That one got thrown out. The plaintiffs ap…

When I worked at EFF, I read a lot of news coverage (and forum discussions) of litigation, sometimes including litigation that I was working on. It was often very hard to get people to see larger context about issues like

* in the course of a court case, a judge (or multiple judges from multiple courts) are asked to make many different decisions on many different legal issues; most of those don't end or determine the outcome of the overall case

* indeed, some of the decisions are about minor issues and others are about major issues

* some of the issues presented in a case may be "questions of first impression" where no court has ever addressed them before; these are potentially very important as a matter of precedent because they might affect how similar questions are viewed in other cases

* other issues may be very longstanding or familiar ones

* lawyers may be willing to bring cases with different degrees of novelty (e.g. relying entirely on an untested theory, or not!), and with different likelihoods of success

* legal standards will often have many different elements, and one party may lose under a standard even though it met most of the elements (but not all of them)

All of these are more complex from the natural impulse to say "hooray, the court made a decision in favor of the people I think are the good guys!" or "boo, the court made a decision in favor of the people I think are the bad guys!".

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#166

Post by eddythompson80 »

giantg2 wrote: post #105
eddythompson80 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germ theory originated in Europe and it took a couple of decades before the knowledge transfer made it to the US and started getting accepted. It took a while for it to be come generally accepted in Europe too. I'm hazy on the exact dates, but even accepting the 1860 date, it's far too close to 1868 to assume politicians and the general public in the US (or even in Europe in 8 years) would have passed a constitutiona…

It wouldn't have taken decades. Information might have taken a year or two. Decisions on what to do with that may take longer. I find it unlikely that germ theory wasn't known by those involved with the 14th amendment, even though it wasnt based on it.

I’m basing my assumptions based on a book called Rabid which suggested (if memory serves correctly) that the rabies vaccine (developed in 1885) was the one of the early catalysts for the wide acceptance of germ theory among the American public. If you want a random source here is one https://www.civilwarmed.org/germ-theory-civil-war/

> To his credit, Dr. Lister crossed the Atlantic to deliver a lecture to a hostile American audience to try and convince them of his methods in 1876.

> Our own Jake Wynn argues that it wasn’t until the death of President Garfield in 1881 that the American public and physicians began to turn toward germ theory. His slow and painful descent from an assassination attempt was well documented and publicized at the time.

There is a difference between information transmission and it getting absorbed into the public opinion and understanding so much that a constitutional amendment would consider it. To go from Joseph Lister’s and Louis Pasteur’s work in the 1860s and think that politicians and the general voting public in the US passing a constitutional amendment that considers it in a handful of years just doesn’t make much sense.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#167

Post by tzs »

ceejayoz wrote: post #103
tzs wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense. The 14th not covering clean water at the time it was written is not because they didn't have germ theory. The comparison to the 2nd also makes no sense. First, machine guns come up in arguments about reducing the scope of the 2nd whereas the argument here is about expanding the scope of the 14th. Second, the 2nd is a lot clearer than the 14th. Pretty much every concrete right we get out of the 14…

> The 14th not covering clean water at the time it was written is not because they didn't have germ theory. That was the legal theory upthread. Which I contest. > Second, the 2nd is a lot clearer than the 14th. "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" seems pretty clear, and I'm inclined to consider "intentionally providing contaminated water" to be a violatio…

>> The 14th not covering clean water at the time it was written is not because they didn't have germ theory.

> That was the legal theory upthread. Which I contest.

Who argued that?

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#168

Post by iamEAP »

rbanffy wrote: post #99
iamEAP wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to clean water may not be enshrined in the US constitution, but it’s not accurate to say it’s not “any sort of basic right.” It’s enshrined explicitly as such in a variety of UN documents and EU laws and instruments. I wish more of my fellow Americans had a better idea of what fundamental rights the US has chosen not integrate into domestic law over the past 8 or so decades.

I might be mistaken, but when an international treaty is ratified, it has the same weight as a constitutional amendment. I’m sure the US ratified something around those lines.

It is unfortunately not that straightforward in the case of the US. For example, the ICCPR was ratified by the US, but declared “not self-executing.” The ICESCR was never ratified.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#169

Post by db48x »

schoen wrote: post #165
db48x wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re hopeless. And do you not understand the process? The plaintiff brings a lawsuit arguing that the defendant did a bad thing. They make multiple claims about laws that were broken. The judge may throw out any or all of those claims. Most lawsuits lose at least one. In this case one of the claims was that the municipal water district violated their 14th amendment rights. That one got thrown out. The plaintiffs ap…

When I worked at EFF, I read a lot of news coverage (and forum discussions) of litigation, sometimes including litigation that I was working on. It was often very hard to get people to see larger context about issues like * in the course of a court case, a judge (or multiple judges from multiple courts) are asked to make many different decisions on many different legal issues; most of those don't end or determine the…

I don’t like it, but you’re probably right. It is evident that many commenters have treated this story as a catastrophe that proves that the government is out to get them rather than a temporary setback for the plaintiffs and the obvious consequence of a logical overreach.

Re: No constitutional right to clean water, federal court finds

#170

Post by db48x »

Frieren wrote: post #62

As a not American, why does freedom of speech include corporations giving money that are not citizens nor talking. But even that Congress has the power to spend "to provide for the common defence and general welfare" given by the constitution it still not a right to receive any of that. I have a feeling that there is a interpretation bias in favor of corporations over human life.

People in the USA have both the right speak as they wish and to associate amongst themselves freely for any lawful purpose. A corporation is nothing more than a group of people who are associating with each other.

If one person acting alone has a right to speak, how can that same right be denied to a group who have decided to speak together? And since “speech” in this context has always been interpreted to mean any act by which a message is conveyed to other people, it naturally includes applause, sitting quietly, donating money, etc, etc.

Post reply on HN