17
Jan
U.S. Supreme Court To Decide Whether Chemical Manufacturers Can Be Sued for Failure to Disclose Pesticide Hazards
(Beyond Pesticides, January 17, 2026) The public’s right to sue chemical manufacturers that do not warn of product hazards will be up for review by the U.S. Supreme Court later this year, the justices decided Friday. Bayer/Monsanto is challenging billions of dollars in jury verdicts, which affirm longstanding jurisprudence that holds manufacturers responsible for disclosing hazards even when not required to do so by regulatory authorities. In the case being challenged, Durnell, John L. v. Monsanto, the injured party successfully argued that a chemical manufacturer has a duty to warn of potential hazards on their product label even though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not require the warning. The failure-to-warn in the Durnell case resulted in a jury verdict of $1.2 billion, and the total number of jury verdicts and settlements on similar cases may amount to over $10 billion in liability if the Supreme Court upholds the lower courts and hundreds of thousands of other plaintiffs with the same claim. The cases involve exposure to the weed killer glyphosate (RoundupTM, which is the most widely used herbicide in the U.S. and worldwide, has been classified as posing a possible risk of cancer by the International Agency for Research Cancer, and is associated in the scientific literature with a range of serious adverse health and ecosystem and wildlife effects. (See Gateway on Pesticide Hazards and Safe Pesticide Management.)
It has long been held that chemical manufacturers are accountable for hazards associated with their products and have a duty to warn product users of the potential harm associated with their use. The court expressly limited its writ of certiorari to the question of whether federal pesticide product registration law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, “preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning.” A 2005 Supreme Court decision, in Bates v. Dow Agrosciences, upheld the right of those harmed by a pesticide to sue for damages.
“Two decades ago, the Supreme Court rejected the chemical industry argument that compliance with federal pesticide use restrictions protects manufacturers from liability claims associated with the harm caused by their products,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides.” “In this case, the industry is arguing that compliance with EPA labeling requirements should shield manufacturers from disclosing on the product label hazards that they knew about or should have known about,” he said. Beyond Pesticides cites the high degree of influence that chemical manufacturers have over the regulatory process and the underlying standards in the law. Meanwhile, the preponderance of independent peer-reviewed data on glyphosate hazards has been widely available in the scientific literature for decades, and the herbicide is banned or highly restricted around the world.
Beyond the Supreme Court case, the chemical industry, led by Bayer/Monsanto, is seeking to pass legislation to shield chemical companies from failure-to-warn lawsuits. The industry had a bit of a setback when its preemption language was pulled from the FY2025 budget bill now moving through Congress. The most recent appropriations bill language in the U.S. House of Representatives, which may be attached in some form to other legislative vehicles like the Farm Bill, effectively provides total pesticide manufacturer immunity from lawsuits that challenge company withholding of label information on the harm that product use can cause. Public health and environmental advocates say that chemical companies have successfully lobbied for a weak federal pesticide law and then try to hide behind the law when sued for damages or failure to warn, arguing in court that their products are in compliance with pesticide registration standards and therefore they are not liable for harm or nondisclosure of hazards. In late 2025, a broad coalition, including Beyond Pesticides and over 50 organizations, coalitions, businesses, and leaders, called on Congress to reject industry language in any federal legislative package under Congressional consideration.
In state legislatures across the country, the industry is pushing for state legislation to prohibit lawsuits for failure to warn. To accomplish this, Bayer founded the Modern Ag Alliance, along with agribusiness groups including state Farm Bureaus, to stop what they describe as “scientifically unsound lawsuits” on glyphosate.
For more information, see Beyond Pesticides’ resource hub (currently being updated for the 2026 state legislative sessions). See also background on Congressional legislation and solicitor general amicus on Bayer/Monsanto’s efforts before the Supreme Court. See press release here.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
