The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that federal pesticide law bars state-court lawsuits alleging that Monsanto, a subsidiary of Bayer AG, failed to warn consumers that its Roundup weedkiller could cause cancer.
In a 7-2 decision in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, the court found that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act expressly preempts state failure-to-warn claims because the Environmental Protection Agency has approved Roundup's label without a cancer warning and federal regulations require manufacturers to use that EPA-approved label. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Tens of thousands of pending cases from consumers who say glyphosate — Roundup's key active ingredient — gave them cancer without adequate warning from Monsanto are now expected to be thrown out as a result of the decision, the Associated Press reported.
At the center of the case was John Durnell, a St. Louis-area man who spent roughly two decades applying Roundup to parks in his neighborhood and subsequently developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. After a jury sided with Durnell and awarded $1.25 million in damages, the Missouri Court of Appeals rejected Monsanto's preemption arguments and let the verdict stand. The Supreme Court reversed that decision.
The court held that because EPA has determined glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer in humans and has repeatedly approved Roundup's label without a cancer warning since 1974, any state-law requirement to add such a warning would impose a labeling obligation "in addition to or different from" federal requirements — which FIFRA expressly prohibits.
Welcoming the outcome, Bayer issued a statement calling it "good for science, farmers, and industries that depend on regulatory clarity for innovation" and predicting it would go a long way toward winding down nearly a decade of Roundup-related legal exposure. The company said it intends to move forward with a $7.25 billion class-action settlement proposal aimed at resolving a large share of the outstanding claims.
Christopher Seeger, an attorney slated to represent claimants in the settlement, condemned the decision, saying it "wrongly slams the courthouse door on Americans sickened by pesticides," while acknowledging that the proposed settlement could still provide a path to compensation for some plaintiffs.
The case drew arguments over whether FIFRA's preemption clause blocked state cancer-warning claims against Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018. The company argued that because it cannot alter an EPA-approved label without agency permission, state tort suits demanding a cancer warning were federally barred. Supporting Monsanto's position, the Justice Department filed a brief contending that after an exhaustive evidentiary review, the EPA had concluded that Roundup's existing label was sufficient to protect public health — and that this federal determination should take precedence over state tort claims.
The scientific dispute underlying the litigation traces to a 2015 determination by the WHO's cancer research arm, which labeled glyphosate a probable human carcinogen — a conclusion that triggered a wave of lawsuits even as the EPA, along with regulators in Canada, Australia, Japan, and the European Union, has consistently reached the opposite conclusion when the chemical is used as directed.