The Supreme Court granted Bayer legal immunity from lawsuits claiming its weedkiller Roundup causes cancer, delivering a 7-2 ruling Thursday that blocks thousands of pending cases against the agrochemical giant.
The decision will send shockwaves through the Make America Healthy Again movement. MAHA activists blame glyphosate — Roundup’s active ingredient — not only for rising cancer rates among farm workers but also for gluten intolerance and metabolic dysfunction.
THE COURT RULED BAYER CANNOT BE SUED OVER CANCER WARNINGS THE EPA ALREADY APPROVED
The majority held that after the EPA decides what warnings belong on a pesticide label, the manufacturer must use that exact label unless the EPA later approves or requires changes. That federal approval now preempts state-law failure-to-warn lawsuits.
Large agriculture corporations are celebrating. They argue glyphosate is essential to maintain food security and that removing it would devastate crop yields.
But the ruling is a crushing blow to MAHA advocates who view the chemical as a central threat to American health. The movement has pushed for years to ban glyphosate outright, pointing to studies linking it to non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other diseases.
Bayer acquired Roundup when it bought Monsanto in 2018. The company has faced tens of thousands of lawsuits from plaintiffs alleging the herbicide gave them cancer. Some juries awarded damages in the hundreds of millions.
Thursday’s decision effectively ends that legal avenue. Plaintiffs can no longer argue in state court that Bayer failed to warn consumers adequately — because the EPA already signed off on the label.
The two dissenting justices were not identified in the source material.
