The Supreme Court has dealt a devastating blow to the Make America Healthy Again Movement by blocking a path for users of the popular Roundup weedkiller to secure payouts from Monsanto for failing to disclose the product’s cancer risk.
In a 7-2 ruling led by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled in favor of Bayer, which owns Monsanto, finding that states cannot require more information on the pesticide label than required by federal regulation.
Failure-to-warn arguments have helped Roundup customers like Missouri resident John Durnell, who won a $1.25 million state court verdict against Monsanto after he developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Roundup users have argued that the product’s key ingredient, glyphosate, is carcinogenic. EPA has determined that the chemical does not pose a cancer risk if used according to the label’s instructions, a finding that Monsanto and Trump officials said blocks states from reaching their own determinations about what information should appear on the weed killer’s label.
The fight over pesticides has galvanized the MAHA movement, even as some of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s allies have criticized him for not going far enough to advance their priorities on pesticides and vaccines. Grassroots supporters, however, have successfully pushed to rid the House farm bill of language that would protect pesticide makers against liability.
But they’ve failed to win the full support from the White House and congressional Republicans on their anti-pesticide efforts. The Trump administration has struggled to thread the needle of supporting a traditionally loyal constituency — farmers — and pleasing a relatively new part of the MAGA coalition, MAHA advocates. At the Supreme Court, Trump’s White House sided with Bayer in an amicus brief, prompting widespread frustration among MAHA advocates.
The White House has sought to reassure its farming allies who worried the administration was poised to ban glyphosate. In addition to its support for Bayer at the Supreme Court, the Trump administration approved a mining permit for Bayer and signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to boost domestic glyphosate production — sparking ire from MAHA advocates.
The blowback culminated in a rally in front of the Supreme Court, where MAHA advocates, lawmakers of both parties and lawyers spoke against a ruling favoring Bayer and other pesticide manufacturers.
Still, MAHA advocates were successful in ridding the House farm bill draft of language that would have protected pesticide makers from liability.
Bayer recently entered a $7.25 billion settlement to resolve current and future Roundup cancer lawsuits.
The settlement will continue to help users of the product who are now foreclosed from raising failure-to-warn claims against the company in state courts.
