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NAACP Sues Michigan Governor Over Flint Water Crisis

(REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

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Chris White Tech Reporter
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has filed a lawsuit against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on behalf of Flint residents, most of whom are black, over his alleged inability to detect a problem with the city’s water supply.

The class action lawsuit, filed by the NAACP on March 31 and made public Wednesday, accused various state and city officials tasked to investigate Flint’s water of failing to take seriously the lead-poisoning crisis and for not doing enough to fix the problem after it metastasized. It also accused Snyder and other state officials of negligence and inflicting distress, as well as violating the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The lawsuit also named the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality as another culprit in the bungled investigation.

“The people of Flint have been harmed through the failure of state officials to provide professional and accountable basic services mandated by federal law and expected by any person living in a major city,” Cornell Brooks, the NAACP’s national president, said in a press statement.

The NAACP noted that it will continue to stand “with the citizens of Flint” and demanded Flint and Michigan officials fix and implement “effective remedies for the harms that have already occurred and complete compensation for each and every victim of this unimaginable tragedy.”

Liberal documentary filmmaker and media hound Michael Moore previously slammed Snyder and others associated with the Flint crisis, telling panelists on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that the governor’s alleged inaction was tantamount to “a hate crime.”

“This is not a lead issue, this is not even an infrastructure issue,” Moore, who was born in Flint, continued. “This was a decision made by a Republican governor to give the rich in Michigan a billion dollar tax break, and when they had a billion less dollars budget it was like ‘What are we going to do? We got to cut back on services. Anybody got any ideas? Yeah, let’s take Flint off the drinking water from the Great Lakes and make them drink from the Flint River, so we can save money.”

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