The Supreme Court handed Monsanto and its current owner Bayer a major victory Thursday, ruling that federal pesticide law blocks thousands of state-level lawsuits claiming the company failed to warn consumers that Roundup causes cancer.
The 7-2 decision in Monsanto v Durnell hinged on a narrow but potent legal principle: when the EPA approves a pesticide label, states cannot impose their own warning requirements through the courts. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (Fifra) "expressly preempts" failure-to-warn claims where federal regulators have not mandated a specific warning label.
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, has been the subject of enormous litigation. Bayer has faced more than 100,000 lawsuits from people diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma who blame their illness on exposure to the widely used herbicide. The company has already paid billions in jury awards and settlements, yet insisted it would not be liable if the EPA determined no cancer warning was necessary.
The EPA has not required a cancer warning on glyphosate products, maintaining the chemical is "unlikely" to be carcinogenic in humans. That agency position, the Court found, trumps any state law requirement that companies warn of cancer risks themselves.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, arguing that Fifra limits state authority but does not eliminate it. Jackson wrote that the ruling "leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered" and accused the majority of misinterpreting federal preemption law. She contended that when a company violates both state law and Fifra, state claims should proceed.
The practical impact is sweeping. Several thousand pending lawsuits against Monsanto involving failure-to-warn claims will likely be dismissed. Similar claims in thousands of cases against pesticide maker Syngenta over alleged links between its paraquat weedkiller and Parkinson's disease are also blocked.
Bayer celebrated the outcome as a win for "science, farmers, and industries that depend on regulatory clarity." The company said the decision should "significantly contain" the Roundup litigation after nearly a decade of legal battles and bar future warning-based claims entirely.
Environmental and public health advocates responded with alarm. Patti Goldman of Earthjustice noted that EPA approval of a label does not guarantee safety and should not shield companies from warning about known risks. Nathan Donley of the Center for Biological Diversity called it a "Trump-blessed ruling" that blocks Americans from seeking justice and pointed to a need to "profoundly reform" what he called an "industry-captured" system of pesticide regulation.
Farm Action, a farmer advocacy group, said it was disappointed but vowed to continue fighting, with president Angela Huffman warning that "no corporation should be allowed to use its market power or political influence to put itself above the law."
The glyphosate dispute has shadowed the industry for years. The World Health Organization's cancer research arm classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015, a designation that has fueled public concern even as U.S. regulators maintain its safety profile.
Author James Rodriguez: "The Court just handed pesticide makers a get-out-of-lawsuit card, and the practical effect is that sick people lose their day in court when the EPA hasn't explicitly required a warning label."
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