Supreme Court may block thousands of lawsuits over Monsanto’s weed killer
WASHINGTON— The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear Monsanto’s argument that the Environmental Protection Agency should be protected from tens of thousands of lawsuits over its weedkiller Roundup because it does not require a warning label that it can cause cancer.
The justices won’t be able to resolve the decades-long dispute over whether glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, causes cancer.
Some studies have found it to be possibly carcinogenic, and others have concluded that it poses no real cancer risk to humans.
But the court could exempt Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer, from legal claims by more than 100,000 plaintiffs suing over cancer diagnoses.
The legal dispute involves whether federal regulatory laws protect the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers.
In product liability cases, plaintiffs often seek to hold product manufacturers liable for failing to warn of a known hazard.
John Durnell of Missouri said he sprayed Roundup for years without gloves or a mask because he believed it was safe to control weeds. He filed the lawsuit after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
In 2023, a jury rejected the claim that the product was defective, but a state court found it had “strict liability to warn the claim.” It was decided to pay him 1.25 million dollars in compensation.
Monsanto appealed, arguing that this state law decision conflicted with federal law regulating pesticides.
“EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached this conclusion after reviewing the extensive science on glyphosate for more than five decades.” The company told the court in his appeal.
They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products containing Roundup, but that it would be “misbranded” with such a warning.
However, they said, “the basis of this case, and thousands of similar cases, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the express warning that the EPA rejected.”
On Friday the court said in a statement: short order He said he would decide “whether the Federal Pesticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based claim of failure to warn where EPA does not require a warning.”
The court will likely hear arguments in the Monsanto v. Durnell case in April and issue a decision by the end of June.
Monsanto says it has removed Roundup from consumer products, but it is still used on farms.
Last month, Trump administration lawyers urged the court to hear the case.
They said the EPA “approved hundreds of labels for Roundup and other glyphosate-based products without requiring a cancer warning,” but state courts have upheld lawsuits for failure to warn.
Environmentalists said the court should not intervene to protect manufacturers of dangerous products.
EarthJustice lawyers said the court could “relief pesticide companies from this situation even if their products make people sick.”
“People don’t expect to get cancer when they use pesticides on their fields or lawns,” said senior attorney Patti Goldman. “Yet it happens, and when it does, state court cases provide the only real path to accountability.”
