Trump admin backs Monsanto effort to limit Roundup lawsuits over glyphosate
The Trump administration is backing Monsanto in its effort to get the Supreme Court to shield it from liability over cancer claims related to its Roundup weedkiller, a move that could anger the Trump administration’s allies in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
The Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that lawsuits alleging that Monsanto failed to warn consumers of the health impacts of its Roundup weedkiller are preempted by federal law.
The brief comes in support of Monsanto’s effort to get the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that the company had to pay damages for failing to warn about its product’s health impacts.
The Trump administration’s brief notes that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers Roundup ingredient glyphosate not likely to be cancer causing and has approved its use.
It says that states should not be able to impose further requirements that give rise to failure-to-warn lawsuits.
“The labeling requirements imposed by Missouri’s failure-to-warn law are preempted by [the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act,]” the brief states.
The specific case at issue is a claim from Missouri under whose failure-to-warn law cancer patient John Durnell was awarded $1.25 million.
The case could have far-reaching impacts, as Monsanto faces 100,000 similar suits , according to its court brief.
Monsanto parent company Bayer released a statement in support of the government’s intervention, saying the Supreme Court will now be more likely to hear its case.
“The support of the U.S. Government is an important step and good news for U.S. farmers, who need regulatory clarity. The stakes could not be higher as the misapplication of federal law jeopardizes the availability of innovative tools for farmers and investments in the broader U.S. economy,” said Bayer CEO Bill Anderson in a written statement.
However, the Trump administration’s move could draw ire from its friends in the MAHA movement, which has been skeptical of pesticides.
MAHA-aligned activists have rallied against what they view as a congressional effort to shield pesticide companies from liability.
While the EPA has said that there’s insufficient evidence that glyphosate causes illnesses in humans, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified the chemical as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
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