Supreme Court shields pesticide makers from some state failure-to-warn claims
The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, holding that the federal pesticide-labeling law preempts state-law claims that the company should have warned consumers of cancer risks from its Roundup weedkiller. The court reasoned that because federal regulators approved the product’s label without a cancer warning, a state cannot impose liability for failing to add one.
The decision removes the central legal theory behind a wave of lawsuits that has produced multibillion-dollar jury verdicts against Bayer and weighed heavily on its share price since it acquired Monsanto. By holding that compliance with the federally approved label forecloses “failure-to-warn” claims, the ruling sharply limits plaintiffs’ ability to pursue similar suits in state courts, though other claims and the underlying scientific dispute over glyphosate’s risks remain unresolved.
The two dissenting justices argued the majority read the federal statute too broadly, leaving injured consumers without a remedy that Congress did not clearly intend to eliminate.