The Truth About the Truth: It’s a Right We Never Had

It turns out, our elected officials are under no obligation whatsoever not to lie to us.

Remember the first time you saw Erin Brockovich and you had to scrape your jaw off the floor when you learned that the power company knew that it had contaminated the entire town’s drinking water with a cancer-causing industrial chemical and they didn’t just let people drink it anyway—they explicitly assured them that it was safe?

Best scene ever.

You might think that since that actual story already played out in real life and on the big screen (ICYMI, Julia Roberts figured it all out, the bad guys got exposed, we all learned what toxic hexavalent chromium was, and Hollywood made a mint off the whole mess) that there’d really be no need for a sequel.

Jackson, Mississippi didn’t get the memo. In 2022, residents brought a lawsuit against the city, alleging that officials not only knowingly allowed them to drink lead-contaminated water, but—and I hope you are sitting down for this part—explicitly assured them that it was safe.

In the suit, the plaintiffs argued that the water contamination violated their constitutional right to bodily integrity. (It was pretty much their only option, since there’s no constitutional right to clean water.) Their case hinged on the 14th Amendment’s due process clause—the one that essentially says that there are certain fundamental rights the government is required to respect. Seems fair enough. But last week, a federal appeals court announced that while the deprivation of clean water was “grievous,” it did “not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”

Which, okay. The Founding Fathers forgot to work indoor plumbing into the Bill of Rights. They had a lot to consider. No shade.

But then Judge Kurt Engelhardt casually dropped this little constitutional fun fact:

“We find no deeply rooted history or tradition establishing a constitutional right to truthful information from officials during
a public-health crisis.”

Oh. Silly me. Here I’d spent the last six years spewing angry steam from my ears every time another government official stood behind a podium emblazoned with an official seal and lied about what we needed to do to survive the unprecedented public-health emergency before us, when it turns out, the inalienable right to the truth doesn’t exist.

Apparently, I made that part up.

At first, I thought “during a public-health crisis” was the key to the ruling; the hall pass that let the government routinely twist the truth. Like, the main rule was elected officials normally have to be truthful—but if anyone declares a public-health crisis, everyone’s allowed to just start lying their faces off. For the good of the people or just until morale improves or as soon as we reach herd immunity or something ridiculous along those lines.

The reality is actually way worse than any of that. There is, in fact, no “constitutional right to truth” from the government… at all. Ever. Not even if they knowingly tell you something is safe and you believe them and it physically harms or kills you or someone you love. So that’s a delightful little wrinkle.

Should one of the aforementioned undesirable outcomes transpire, the judge in the Jackson case helpfully explained that your available avenues of recourse are to “elect better representatives and petition the government for remedies.” I am not making that up. So if your government poisons you and then allegedly lies about the poison, be sure to write some strongly worded letters and express your displeasure at the ballot box (assuming the poisoning hasn’t affected your ability to power up your laptop or remember when Election Day is).

“The judge found the lead exposure that resulted from the city’s mismanagement was ‘wholly different’ from past examples when governments infringed on a person’s right to bodily integrity, including ‘from forced surgery, involuntary medicating, and assault,’” USA Today reported.

I’m sorry, what? “Look, we let you drink a little lead. And fine, we told you it wouldn’t hurt you. But come on. Have you seen the other ways we’ve violated people’s physical safety and autonomy? Frankly, you got off easy.”

Perhaps the most infuriating part is that the court had precedent on its side. After 9/11, people were repeatedly promised that the air around Ground Zero was perfectly safe to breathe. So rescue workers kept digging, residents returned to their homes, employees went back to work, and kids trotted off to school—all while inhaling a toxic cloud of carcinogenic confetti containing asbestos, silica, heavy metals, and glass fibers. Then people started getting sick. Really sick. Chronic respiratory disease, leukemia, lymphoma, lung cancer, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and dozens more diagnoses nobody remembered seeing in the Perfectly Safe™ brochure.

Today, the federal World Trade Center Health Program has certified more than 57,000 9/11-related cancer cases, and nearly 10,000 first responders and survivors have died of illnesses related to the attacks.

They literally said this was fine to breathe. SMH.

Naturally, people sued, alleging that officials had violated their constitutional rights by insisting that the air was safe when they knew—or should have known—otherwise. The courts rejected their claims. Even “deliberate indifference” to people’s safety, the Second Circuit found, wasn’t enough to create liability in the aftermath of a disaster.

I’d really like a word with whoever buried that particular clause in America’s user agreement.

In a twist so perfectly timed I’m starting to suspect the universe subscribes to this Substack, just yesterday, New York City released more than 170,000 pages of previously withheld records about post-9/11 air quality—many of which were allegedly only discovered last year, despite years of litigation and public-records demands. And wouldn’t you know it? Documents reviewed so far suggest that officials were well aware of—and actively downplayed—the toxic conditions at Ground Zero.

In other news, there is no constitutional right to a timely apology.

(Also, can we just talk about the government’s record-keeping system for a sec? How are we habitually misplacing dozens of boxes of documents related to the most consequential events in American history? These aren’t some random zoning-board receipts from 1988. Perhaps DOGE could find some room in the budget for a professional organizer to come in once a year? Maybe check behind the Christmas decorations? Just a thought.)

So, to recap: Apparently, the government can tell you that a thing is harmless when it’s not, tell you that a thing will stop transmission when it doesn’t, tell you a thing is temporary when it isn’t, tell you your children need something they don’t, and tell you not to do your own research, believe your own eyes, or trust your own gut.

And if any of those statements cost you your job, your health, your relationships, your sanity, or your right to make an informed decision about your own body, just elect better people next time.

That’s the remedy. Not transparency. Not accountability. Not a legal duty for public officials to stop making medically consequential pronouncements with the confidence of Moses carrying down the stone tablets. Just elections and petitions—the civic equivalent of being handed a customer-service satisfaction survey after the airline canceled your flight, lost your luggage, and charged you an $85 convenience fee for the experience.

Apparently the real fantasy in Erin Brockovich isn’t Julia Roberts bringing down the power company in a push-up bra. It’s the quaint assumption that the people promising to protect you are under any obligation to be honest.