A Missouri jury heard John Durnell's case, weighed the evidence, and decided that years of Roundup exposure caused his cancer and that Bayer should have warned him. In 2019 it awarded him more than a million dollars. On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court took that away, ruling 7-2 that federal pesticide law bars these state failure-to-warn lawsuits and throwing out the legal theory behind thousands of pending cancer claims.
What troubles me most is what the ruling leans on. The majority says the EPA found glyphosate safe. But a federal appeals court rejected that finding in 2022, ruled the EPA's cancer analysis was flawed, and ordered the agency to redo it. The EPA withdrew it. The World Health Organization's cancer experts called glyphosate 'probably carcinogenic to humans' a decade ago. The Court turned a safety finding a court had already struck down into a permanent shield from liability.
This is not a partisan issue. When Bayer and the pesticide industry tried to write immunity into the Farm Bill, a bipartisan coalition stopped them. More than 70 Republicans and nearly every Democrat voted to strip it out.
I am asking you to finish that work. First, pass legislation making clear that federal pesticide law does not preempt state failure-to-warn claims, so people harmed by a product can still take its maker to court. Second, keep pesticide immunity out of the Farm Bill and every spending bill. Third, demand the EPA complete the glyphosate cancer reassessment the court ordered in 2022.
A company should not get a permanent liability shield from a safety finding a court rejected. Please give cancer patients their day in court back.
