29 June 2026, Washington: Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Monsanto v. Durnell, eliminating the long-established right of people to hold pesticide companies accountable when they fail to warn consumers that their products may cause cancer or other diseases. In a 7-2 decision, the Court’s majority sided with Monsanto (now Bayer) in holding that people who contract cancer from using a pesticide are preempted, or prohibited, from suing manufacturers on the grounds of the pesticide-maker’s “failure to warn” them of cancer risks if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not required a cancer warning in approving the pesticide.
The Durnell case is one of tens of thousands of similar cases in the lower courts where cancer-stricken plaintiffs are suing Monsanto, arguing that its flagship pesticide Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) cancer. “Failure to warn” claims are one of several state law based claims in these actions. Today’s ruling is likely to make more difficult or block similar pending lawsuits seeking compensation for cancer caused by Roundup or other pesticides, and potentially bar future comparable cases.
Center for Food Safety (CFS), the leading legal nonprofit working on food and agriculture issues in the U.S., filed a brief to the Supreme Court in the case on behalf of a broad array of nonprofit public interest stakeholders representing famers, farmworkers, medical professionals, consumer protection advocates, and conservationists.
“Overturning decades of well-settled law, today the Supreme Court eliminated one way the public held pesticide corporations accountable for their products’ harms,” said George Kimbrell, Legal Director at the Center for Food Safety. “But the fight is far from over. EPA’s regulation of pesticides just became all the more vital to protecting the public health and public interest. We will continue to hold EPA accountable when it does not. And States and other governing bodies have other robust roles. The Roundup cancer cases are a telling sign that people are fed up with corporations poisoning their health and environment and want to choose a different future for their food. This decision, while tragic, is a clarion, galvanizing call to continued action: Americans need to continue speaking truth to power and demand their representatives are protecting their health, not corporations’ profit margins.”
Critically, the Court’s decision relies heavily on the EPA’s safety determination for glyphosate, which included denial of glyphosate’s cancer-causing potential. In a landmark CFS lawsuit, a federal court in 2022 struck down that safety determination as unlawful. The court held that EPA’s tacit admission that glyphosate might cause NHL was irreconcilable with its overall denial of glyphosate’s cancer risk, and that the agency violated its own cancer hazard guidelines in rejecting evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity.
And it’s not only glyphosate. CFS’s own analysis found that EPA routinely approves pesticide ingredients it acknowledges pose cancer risks without requiring that users be informed of those risks. In the last 40 years, EPA has classified 200 pesticide active ingredients as “likely” or “possible” carcinogens, with many of them still in use. Yet labels for these EPA-approved pesticides virtually never carry a cancer warning.
“It’s bad enough that EPA approves pesticides that likely cause cancer,” said Bill Freese, Science Director at the Center for Food Safety. “But then not to require a cancer warning on the label so that potential users can decide whether or not to buy the product, and be incentivized to wear rubber gloves and other protective equipment if they do? That’s simply outrageous. An absolute betrayal of the public trust,” he added.
Background
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, is the most widely used pesticide in the United States. Today, 280 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed annually on 298 million acres of U.S. farmland, an area the size of nearly three Californias. Over 21 million more pounds are applied by homeowners, on roadways, in forestry, and for other non-agricultural uses. Because of this intensive use, glyphosate is found regularly in food, soil, air, water, and human bodies.
The Durnell case arose from over a decade of litigation against Monsanto in which juries across the country found the chemical giant guilty of failing to warn cancer-stricken Roundup users that the herbicide and its active ingredient, glyphosate, could give them non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the world authority on carcinogenic agents, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. The classification was based on epidemiology studies showing glyphosate-using farmers are more likely to contract NHL, tumors in rodents fed glyphosate in long-term studies, and tests demonstrating changes typical of cancer in cells exposed to glyphosate. The IARC Working Group that made the unanimous determination included an EPA scientist, among other U.S. cancer experts.
Since then, juries in multiple cases have ruled that Monsanto failed to warn people that Roundup could cause cancer, and that the herbicide was a major factor leading to their non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Approximately 100,000 more such cases were settled by Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018) for roughly $10 billion, with tens of thousands still pending.
Earlier this year, Bayer proposed a $7.25 billion settlement in an attempt to resolve pending lawsuits through a class action settlement rather than resolve claims individually. Just last week, a federal judge sent the settlement case back to state court, overruling plaintiff objections and strengthening Bayer’s efforts to win approval for the settlement. Approximately 61,000 cases against the chemical giant were still pending at the time of today’s decision.
In 2020, EPA issued a registration review decision for glyphosate concluding it was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.” CFS challenged that determination on behalf of farmworkers, farmers, and conservationists. In 2022, a federal court struck down EPA’s human health assessment, based on its denial of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, as contrary to the agency’s own Cancer Guidelines and scientific standards.
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