SCOTUS sides with Bayer in Roundup case, strengthening federal label preemption

SCOTUS sides with Bayer in Roundup case, strengthening federal label preemption

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states cannot use failure-to-warn lawsuits to require pesticide warnings that the EPA has not required. The majority relied on a landmark medical-device decision and said its reasoning extends beyond pesticides to other federally regulated industries. Public health and farming advocates called the ruling a victory for corporate immunity.

In a 7-2 decision, the justices overturned a $1.25 million verdict awarded to John Durnell, a Missouri man who said he developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using Roundup for about two decades. Durnell had served as the "spray guy" for a St. Louis neighborhood association, applying Roundup in local parks without protective equipment beginning in the 1990s.

In a statement, Bayer called the decision good for regulatory clarity, adding that it should significantly contain the Roundup litigation.

U.S. Right to Know, a coalition of public health, food and farming advocates, described the decision as a "major victory for Big Poison" and accused the court of shielding chemical companies from accountability.

In his majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly cited the Supreme Court's medical-device preemption precedent. "The Court's decision in Riegel further confirms that Durnell's failure-to-warn claim is expressly preempted," Kavanaugh wrote, referring to the 2008 case Riegel v. Medtronic. It does not, however, create blanket immunity for every product with an FDA-approved label.

The EPA has repeatedly concluded that glyphosate is not likely to cause cancer. However, the International Agency for Research on Cancer reached a different conclusion in 2015, classifying glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic to humans." The question before the Supreme Court was not whether glyphosate causes cancer, but whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act permits a state jury to require a warning the EPA has not required.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett joined Kavanaugh's opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch. Jackson concluded that the ruling "unjustifiably closes the courthouse doors to state tort plaintiffs like Durnell."

The Trump administration had urged the court to side with Bayer, arguing that state juries should not be permitted to second-guess the EPA's labeling determinations.