Supreme Court shoots down cancer lawsuits against Roundup manufacturer
· UPIJune 25 (UPI) -- Monsanto, which manufactures the weedkiller Roundup, cannot be sued for lacking labels that warn buyers that the product may cause cancer, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
Because the Environmental Protection Agency has said the weedkiller is safe and does not need a warning label, Monsanto is not required under federal law to include one and, as a result, states cannot require it do so, CBS News and USA Today reported.
Roundup has for more than a decade been the subject of lawsuits on the assertion that its active ingredient, glyphosate, gave people non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after a World Health Organization agency classified the chemical as a probable human carcinogen.
The Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Monsanto in a case brought in Missouri by John Durnell in 2019 alleging that his use of Roundup for roughly 20 years had caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that the product should have included a cancer warning on its label.
The ruling overturned Durnell's million-dollar award from a lower court because federal rules allow companies to ignore state-issued label requirements if they have met federal guidelines from the EPA.
"In sum, federal law requires Monsanto to sell Roundup with the label that EPA approved at the initial registration and that EPA has subsequently re-approved on multiple occasions -- that is, the label without a cancer warning," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority in the Court's decision.
"Durnell's state tort claim, by contrast, would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to its labels," Kavanaugh wrote.
Glyphosate-based herbicides are widely used across the agricultural sector.
They have, however, been the subject of controversy since the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer announced the 2015 classification based on "limited" evidence of cancer in humans linked real-world exposures and "sufficient" evidence of cancer in experimental animals.
Glyphosate by 2021 had been detected in human fluids -- despite science suggesting it was not absorbed by the body -- and had been shown in studies to cause liver and kidney damage in rats, as well as altering the gut microbiomes of honey bees, among other affects seen in lab experiments.
In a statement, Monsanto-owner Bayer said that the Court's ruling acknowledged "the settled consensus of the world's foremost scientific experts," including the European Food Safety Authority and various health regulators in Asia and Latin America.
Bayer CEO Bill Anderson in the statement called the decision "good for American farmers who help feed the world," adding that it gives the company "regulatory clarity" for its products.
"This litigation has enormous costs for the company and has impacted public trust," Anderson said.
"The decision brings overdue justice on an issue that should have been clarified much earlier," he said. "Its time to put it behind us."