The maker of the popular Roundup weedkiller is running roughshod over the power of the courts to interpret the law, according to attorneys for a Missouri resident enmeshed in a lawsuit against the company, in a filing to the nation’s highest bench.
In a brief docketed Wednesday, lawyers for John Durnell urged the Supreme Court to rebuff Monsanto’s argument that EPA’s assertion that glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — is noncarcinogenic should invalidate a $1.25 million verdict awarded to Durnell, who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using the weedkiller.
“In a typical civil case, judges announce the law and juries determine the facts,” attorneys for Durnell wrote in their brief. “If Congress wants to adjust that paradigm and empower a federal bureaucrat to act as judge, jury, and executor, it must say so expressly.”
Throughout the brief, Durnell’s legal team cited Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the 2024 Supreme Court decision that overturned the Chevron doctrine. For 40 years, the legal theory gave agencies like EPA leeway on their interpretation of ambiguous federal laws.
