Flint Water Crisis: Supreme Court Allows City Residents To Sue Over Water Contamination

The Supreme Court will allow residents of Flint, Michigan, to level civil rights lawsuits against the city for allowing its water supply to become contaminated by lead. The court on Tuesday turned away two appeals by Flint city regulators and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

The appeals had previously been thrown out by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court, which found that the city government and its official had violated the constitution by knowingly allowing Flint’s water to become contaminated. The lawsuits leveled against these officials are now expected to move forward in lower courts.

The city’s water supply became tainted after its source was switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River in 2014 to cut costs. The corrosive quality of the river water caused pipes to dissolve, resulting in lead leaching into the city’s water. The city switched back to the lake a year later, but not before the lead-tainted water caused an outbreak of Legionnaires’ Disease, killing 12 and infecting many others.

Residents argued that city and state authorities violated their constitutional right to “bodily integrity” by knowingly switching to the river source, giving them grounds for civil rights lawsuits.

State officials argued that they should be shielded from suits, as they claimed to have not purposefully infected residents with leads and that “They were doing the best they could in difficult circumstances with limited information certified by Flint as accurate and in compliance with lead and copper mandates.”