A federal appeals court has affirmed claims that several government employees linked to the Flint water crisis violated the constitutional rights of the city’s residents, emphasizing that the conduct of some Michigan state officials “shock our conscience.”
The Jan. 4 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is the first by a federal appeals court to address a substantive claim brought in several of the water crisis cases, including a pending class action: whether government officials violated Flint, Michigan, residents’ substantive due process rights to bodily integrity under the 14th Amendment.
