10
Jun
Industry Effort to Quash Lawsuits for Failure to Disclose Hazards Defeated in 9 States, Eyes on North Carolina
(Beyond Pesticides, June 10, 2025) An industry-led campaign to quash lawsuits against chemical manufacturers because of their “failure to warn” about the hazards of their pesticide products has failed to move forward in nine state legislatures with significant GOP majorities (Iowa, Missouri, Idaho, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma). As the Making America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission released its first report to assess the root causes of childhood diseases and adverse health conditions, there continues to be an ongoing fight among forces within the Trump Administration on whether pesticides should even be mentioned. (See here for The New York Times coverage.)
As federal funding cuts make their way through the Budget Reconciliation process, communities around the country are calling on their elected officials to protect their right to sue pesticide manufacturers with failure-to-warn claims; in an era of deregulation and ongoing failure of our regulatory agencies to assess potential associated harms, advocates demand the preservation of this legal right.
Status Report on State-Level Legislation
The only state that has active legislation, as of today’s writing, is North Carolina. The failure-to-warn language was inserted into the annual state Farm Bill package (SB 639) in Section 19, leading to public outcry in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 6. (See here for additional context.)
As the legislative session nears its end, it remains to be seen which direction this state legislature will proceed in at this stage. The bill was pushed forward without public comments in the Senate Finance Committee hearing scheduled the following day due to anticipated backlash from concerned citizens, and then moved to the Rules Committee before it was scheduled for an official Senate-wide vote on May 15. Without any additional notice, the bill was withdrawn from the calendar and remains in the Senate Rules Committee, based on the legislative updates provided by the state legislature website. (See here.)
Reporting from North Carolina Newsline on May 21 highlights advocacy led by Toxic Free North Carolina and other community leaders who have expressed concerns about the 11th-hour inclusion of this language into what is normally a standard piece of legislation that moves through the state legislature to support agricultural communities and the economy on an annual basis.
“This is a direct attack on our community’s right to hold chemical manufacturers accountable for the harm they cause,” says Kendall Wimberley, policy manager at Toxic Free NC. “This is not something communities are asking for.”
Beyond Pesticides will continue to monitor any late-breaking developments, which will be updated on the Bills to Track section of the Failure-to-Warn resource hub.
MAHA community activists are speaking out against this legislation, including in a recent letter signed by nearly 300 “MAHA” advocates directed to the MAHA Commission expressing their “opposition to chemical liability shields.” See here for the letter. It remains to be seen what influence this may have on decision-makers, however it is important to note that in the same month that the MAHA Initial Assessment was released U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) moved forward to rescind its recordkeeping requirement for restricted-use pesticides. The agency provided no public comment period (see here), at the same time that it proposed rescinding organic standards rulemaking for pet food and mushroom products after a delay of the effective date published in the Federal Register. (See here for previous Daily News and here for an archive of a related Action of the Week.)
See a recent Daily News, Flying Through States, Industry Seeks To Stop Lawsuits Over Failure to Warn of Pesticide Dangers, for a mid-session legislative update of where the bills stand as of the beginning of April. See here for Beyond Pesticides’ analysis of the MAHA report, and see here for the associated Action of the Week.
Preemption and the Court System
Bayer is not giving up on the current U.S. Supreme Court as it seeks to overturn current law, established by previous court decisions, including Bates v Dow (2005). However, that strategy is not succeeding, at least not yet. The string of Bayer losses includes a judication decision on February 5, 2024, when the decision by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals came down in favor of the plaintiff in Carson v. Monsanto on Bayer’s claim that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts a “failure-to-warn” claim. (See Daily News here for further analysis.)
For the third time in recent memory, Bayer submitted yet another petition for SCOTUS on April 4, 2025, to “limit legal claims” on Roundup weedkiller linkages to cancer, according to reporting by Reuters. The pesticide manufacturer has signaled optimism that the nation’s highest court will move in a different direction, given that there is now a Federal Court Circuit split with the latest decision in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Schaffner v. Monsanto. As reported in Progressive Farmer in early May, twelve national agricultural groups filed an amicus brief in support of Bayer’s petition. These groups represent the interests of industrial agriculture, including American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association, American Sugarbeet Growers Association, Cherry Marketing Institute, Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, International Fresh Produce Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, National Corn Growers Association, National Cotton Council of America, National Sorghum Producers, North American Blueberry Council and Western Growers. Legal issues continue to mount for the pesticide manufacturer as the Western District of Missouri Court of Appeals upheld a $611 million judgment against Bayer, as reported by Missouri Independent on May 28.
There were several other significant developments in 2024, including the Oregon Court of Appeals decision on July 10, ruling that FIFRA does not preempt pesticide exposure victims’ claims in state court against pesticide manufacturers, based on reporting from The New Lede. An Appellate court overturned a 2022 local court ruling and remanded the case (for a retrial) in part because the judge had failed to consider the expert witness testimony of Chuck Benbrook, PhD, a scientist specializing in agricultural economics with over 40 peer-reviewed articles, reports, and book chapters on pesticide regulation and risk assessment. (See Daily News here.)
Moving into 2025, Bayer has doubled down on the safety of its weedkiller, even though investors are sounding the alarm as the company announced that it could pull Roundup from the U.S. market due to ongoing legal risks. For an in-depth history and related developments for Bayer-Monsanto litigation, see this tracker developed by the Lawsuit Information Center, as well as this informative analysis published in Harvard Law Review.
EPA Legal Petition
Meanwhile, in August 2024, the Republican Attorney General of North Dakota jointly filed a petition to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with 10 other Republican Attorneys General (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, and South Dakota) requesting that the agency promulgate rulemaking to prevent states like California from adding additional warning labels to pesticide and chemical products that disclose more hazard information than is required on warning labels under federal pesticide law.
The proposed petition would prompt the agency to “modify its requirements such that any state labeling requirements inconsistent with EPA’s findings and conclusions from its human health risk assessment on human health effects, such as a pesticide’s likelihood to cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive harm, [would] constitute misbranding.” This rule would consider any add-on label requirement that considers scientific literature not recognized by EPA (such as the 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) designation of glyphosate as a “probably carcinogenic to humans”) in violation of FIFRA’s misbranding clause. If finalized into regulations, this petition would preempt the ability of states like California to continue its add-on cancer warning label language for products under its state law, Proposition 65 (Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986).
See the Action of the Week, As Fed Cuts Protections, Petition Would Prohibit State Pesticide Warnings and Restrictions, for an archive of the EPA public comment docket for the proposed petition. Beyond Pesticides will continue to provide updates as information becomes available.
Farm Bill and Congress
As of today’s publication, there are no indications that federal preemption language was included in the GOP plan. If a comprehensive Farm Bill is considered by Congress, there is a higher likelihood that preemption language from the Agricultural Labeling Uniformity Act or EATS Act (re-introduced as the Food Security and Farm Protection Act on April 8) will be included, given the current balance of the legislative branch. Pesticide manufacturers, including Bayer-Monsanto, have been ramping up their federal lobbying efforts after failing to pass state legislation in nine of the twelve states that give the pesticide industry immunity from failure-to-warn litigation filed by those who charge that manufacturers do not provide adequate disclosure of product hazards.
Language establishing chemical company immunity from “failure-to-warn” litigation and local and state authority to restrict pesticides more stringently than EPA was included in the 2024 Republican Farm Bill draft, escalating the fight over federal preemption of state and local standards and protective authority of the courts. The Senate GOP framework alludes to preemption of state and local governance of pesticides, food systems and production, and public health in Title X, Horticulture title: “Restates and reaffirms U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) obligation with respect to the federal and state regulatory process.” Moreover, Title XII, Miscellaneous states: “Protects the ability of livestock producers to raise and sell products into interstate commerce without interference from other states.” More specifically, this language would have a two-fold impact:
- Prohibit the right to sue for failure to warn when harmed by pesticides. In Section 10204 of the House Farm Bill, language shields (gives immunity to) the producers and users of toxic pesticides from liability lawsuits associated with the harm that their products cause. The provision will block lawsuits like those successfully advanced against Bayer/Monsanto for adverse health effects, like cancer, associated with exposure to their products and companies’ failure to warn about these effects on EPA-approved product labels.
- Prohibit the rights of states and local governments to restrict pesticides and protect public health and the environment. In Sections 10204 and 10205, language would prevent local and state governments from passing pesticide ordinances or concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) regulations that conflict with (aka are more stringent than) federal regulations and policy.
See Daily News here and here, respectively, for further analysis on the Agricultural Labeling Uniformity and Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act.
Call to Action
See the Failure-to-Warn Resource Hub to learn more about the pesticide industry playbook on taking away communities and people’s right to freedom from toxic chemical exposure in their air, waterways, soil, ecosystems, and bodies.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
