27
Jul
Bipartisan U.S. Reps Seek to Require Cancer Warning on Pesticides in Wake of SCOTUS Upholding Secrecy
(Beyond Pesticides, July 27, 2026) One thing that officials at Monsanto (Bayer) probably did not imagine is that their efforts in Congress and at the U.S. Supreme Court would spur a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to push back. Members across the political aisle last week introduced the Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act, H.R. 9807, to overturn Monsanto v. Durnell (June 2026) that protects chemical companies from failing to warn its product users of potential adverse effects, including cancer and other diseases. The bill was introduced on July 21 by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and joined by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), and Thomas Massie (R-KY).
An action, released by Beyond Pesticides, is asking U.S. Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, to cosponsor the Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act, H.R. 9807, to require that pesticide manufacturers warn users on product labels of potential adverse effects like cancer, which EPA does not require.
Monsanto over two years ago launched a state and national campaign after it racked up billions of dollars in jury verdicts and settlements for failing to warn consumers that its glyphosate (RoundupTM) weed killer was potentially cancer causing. A bipartisan resistance to Monsanto and its allies began when: (i) first, state legislators across political parties rejected the company’s state bills to establish immunity from failure-to-warn lawsuits, and; (ii) second, 73 Republicans voted with Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives in April to strip chemical industry provisions from the Farm Bill, including one prohibiting lawsuits against chemical companies for failing to warn the public about their products’ hazards. Now, the question is whether environmental, public health, medical, and legal groups, coalescing with Make America Healthy Again groups, will be able to rally the same bipartisan support and move the legislation to a vote.
Even before the ink was dry on the Supreme Court decision stripping away the right to sue for companies’ failure to warn, industry lawyers began advocating to expand the reach of the Court’s interpretation of federal pesticide law to all other federal and state laws restricting hazardous chemical use. Industry lawyers are advising their clients to seek rulemaking to apply the Supreme Court’s logic to other sectors from ultra-processed foods to fossil fuels—simply put, if the federal government does not require warning of a cancer or other disease risk, then manufacturers are not liable for nondisclosure of the potential harm that is known or should be known to them.
Bipartisan Legislation Overturns Court Ruling, Affirms Cancer Warning on Pesticide Labels
Not so fast, say some members of Congress. U.S. Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), within days of the Supreme Court decision in Monsanto v. Durnell, introduced legislation to overturn the ruling and affirm the responsibility of chemical manufacturers to disclose product hazards like cancer on the label. A strengthened version of the original bill, the Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act, followed. The legislation upholds the basic understanding that the regulatory review process may not fully protect people from harm and therefore requires manufacturers to warn of potential harm not covered on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-required label. Under the federal law, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the Court has found that the EPA registration and label approval process is “adequate to protect health and the environment,” and thus not misbranded, under the agency’s authority to define adequacy.
Chemical Companies Achieve Preemption of State Courts with Supreme Court Ruling
The chemical industry has wanted federal or state law to prohibit legal claims for their failure to warn, characterizing the pesticide registration process and the resulting label, as “gold standard science” that produces an unequivocal statement of safety or acceptable risk that establishes preemption, either expressed or implied, of a state law claim for insufficient warning. It has been said that laws like FIFRA are born out of the “art of the possible,” which is another way of saying statutory language is derived from a process of political compromise. Here, the law compromises individual and collective health as well as the health of families, allowing the registration of chemicals that have a cancer risk without requiring a warning. Given what is known and not known about the initiation and promotion of cancer and other debilitating and deadly diseases, a warning label provides people with the option of informed choice in the market. Public health advocates say this is especially needed until there are stronger laws that prevent the allowance of these pesticides or the market shifts to ecological and organic practices.
Court Breaks with Precedent, Denying Those Harmed but not Warned the Right to Sue
The Supreme Court majority strays from issues of safety to consider the business impact of the law on the chemical industry. The majority of justices raise the economic impact on chemical manufacturers, suggesting that warnings would impede the ability of manufacturers “to sell a product throughout the country with a single label [which] can be important to maintaining an efficient nationwide market.” This breaks with precedent and a previous Supreme Court decision in Dow Chemical v. Bates, in which the Court took the position that litigation gives the manufacturer “a ‘strong incentive’ to change the label,” while “this history emphasizes the importance of providing an incentive to manufacturers to use the utmost care in the business of distributing inherently dangerous items.” Clearly, accountability through legal action incentivizes manufacturers to develop safer products. It also creates a climate in which society would take a more serious look at the necessity to shift to organic practices and products that eliminate these cancer risks that harm our families and friends. Most importantly, it would depress industry influence in the writing of statutes and regulations that are not adequately protective.
EPA-Approved Pesticide Label Is Not Conclusive Evidence of a Safe Product
The legislation is straightforward and protective, stating that “the approval of the labeling of such pesticide by the Administrator, shall not be construed as a defense to any State law claim”—that, as the legislation reads, “registration of a pesticide and the approval of the labeling of such pesticide by the Administrator, shall be prima facie evidence (but not conclusive evidence) that the pesticide and its labeling comply with this Act.” In the minority opinion of the Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson challenged the majority’s thinking that the EPA-approved pesticide label is prima facie evidence of safety sufficient to comply with the law, finding it falls short of “conclusive evidence” or incontrovertible proof of safety. Evidence of potential health effects beyond the registration review of pesticides cited in the legislation includes: a government report; an independent peer-reviewed study; data of the registrant; material obtained through legal discovery; a disclosure by a whistleblower; material from a congressional or other oversight investigation; and pesticide incident data under section 6(a)(2), which requires incident reporting by product manufacturers. The bill streamlines the process for manufacturer-initiated label changes that are more transparent of hazard risks than the EPA-approved label.
Bipartisan Support for Chemical Company Liability for Failure to Warn on Labels
This new legislation builds on the bipartisan vote in the House that stripped from the Farm Bill a pesticide manufacturers’ liability shield for failure to warn on product labels, federal preemption of state and local pesticide laws, and the weakening of bedrock environmental laws and their ability to regulate pesticides.
- Following on this momentum and the Supreme Court’s undermining of basic right-to-know protection, Rep. Luna said: “Families harmed by dangerous products should not lose their right to justice simply because a federal agency failed to require a warning. Our bill protects Americans’ ability to have their claims heard and makes clear that EPA approval is not a license for pesticide manufacturers to conceal serious risks.”
- Rep. Pingree, who had earlier introduced in June the People Over Poisons Act, a narrower version of Rep. Luna’s legislation, said: “The Supreme Court handed pesticide manufacturers a roadmap to escape accountability, even when they fail to warn people about serious health risks. That’s wrong. If a company learns its product may be harming people or the environment, it has a responsibility to say so, not hide behind a federal label approved years earlier. The Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act restores a basic principle: corporations that put profits ahead of people’s health should be held accountable. No one should lose their right to seek justice because a chemical company found a legal loophole.”
- In an opinion piece in the Tampa Bay Times, Rep. Luna writes, “The fight over pesticide liability protections in the Farm Bill was never just about one amendment, but whether Congress would stand with American families and our right to justice, or quietly protect chemical corporations from the consequences of their products (for the right price, of course).” Now that the Supreme Court has ruled to protect corporate interests, not the people’s health, Congress must step up again, and quickly.
The acition asks U.S. Representatives to cosponsor the Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act, H.R. 9807, to require that pesticide manufacturers warn users on product labels of potential adverse effects like cancer, which EPA does not require.
Letter to the U.S. House of Representatives:
Please cosponsor bipartisan legislation, H.R. 9807, the Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act, that will ensure people are warned about pesticide hazards on product labels. I believe this should be a high priority and considered with a degree of urgency.
As you may know, the long-standing requirement to disclose potential hazards like cancer and other debilitating and deadly diseases was taken away by the U.S. Supreme Court in its June decision in Monsanto v. Durnell (2026). To correct this ruling, a bipartisan group, including Reps. Luna, DeLauro, Pingree, and Massie, have joined together to affirm this basic principle of fair disclosure in commerce. This legislation would amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to preserve state failure-to-warn claims that are consistent with federal pesticide misbranding standards and prevent manufacturers from using EPA pesticide registration and label approval as a complete defense against these claims. The legislation updates an earlier bill introduced by Reps. Pingree and Massie.
In Monsanto v. Durnell, the Supreme Court majority breaks with precedent and a previous Supreme Court decision in Dow Chemical v. Bates (2005), in which the Court took the position that litigation gives the manufacturer “a ‘strong incentive’ to change the label,” while “this history emphasizes the importance of providing an incentive to manufacturers to use the utmost care in the business of distributing inherently dangerous items.” Clearly, accountability through legal action incentivizes manufacturers to develop safer products.
The legislation is straightforward and protective, stating that “the approval of the labeling of such pesticide by the Administrator, shall not be construed as a defense to any State law claim”—that, as the legislation reads, “registration of a pesticide and the approval of the labeling of such pesticide by the Administrator, shall be prima facie evidence (but not conclusive evidence) that the pesticide and its labeling comply with this Act.’’
Evidence of potential health effects beyond the registration review of pesticides cited in the legislation includes: a government report; an independent peer-reviewed study; data of the registrant; material obtained through legal discovery; a disclosure by a whistleblower; material from a congressional or other oversight investigation; and pesticide incident data under section 6(a)(2), which requires incident reporting by product manufacturers. The bill streamlines the process for manufacturer-initiated label changes that are more transparent of hazard risks than the EPA-approved label.
This new legislation builds on the bipartisan vote, including 73 Republicans and a majority of Democrats, in the U.S. House of Representatives that stripped from the House Farm Bill a pesticide manufacturers’ liability shield for failure to warn on product labels, federal preemption of state and local pesticide laws, and the weakening of bedrock environmental law and their ability to regulate pesticides.
Following on this momentum and the Supreme Court’s undermining of basic right-to-know protection, Rep. Luna said: “Families harmed by dangerous products should not lose their right to justice simply because a federal agency failed to require a warning. Our bill protects Americans’ ability to have their claims heard and makes clear that EPA approval is not a license for pesticide manufacturers to conceal serious risks.”
Please cosponsor the Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act today. Thank you.
Letter to sponsor and co-sponsors:
Thank you for your leadership in championing this bipartisan legislation, H.R. 9807, the Americans vs. Poisonous Pesticides Act, that will ensure people are warned about pesticide hazards on product labels. I believe this should be a high priority and considered with a degree of urgency.
As you are aware, the long-standing requirement to disclose potential hazards like cancer and other debilitating and deadly diseases was taken away by the U.S. Supreme Court in its June decision in Monsanto v. Durnell (2026). This legislation would amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to preserve state failure-to-warn claims that are consistent with federal pesticide misbranding standards and prevent manufacturers from using EPA pesticide registration and label approval as a complete defense against these claims.
In Monsanto v. Durnell, the Supreme Court majority breaks with precedent and a previous Supreme Court decision in Dow Chemical v. Bates (2005), in which the Court took the position that litigation gives the manufacturer “a ‘strong incentive’ to change the label,” while “this history emphasizes the importance of providing an incentive to manufacturers to use the utmost care in the business of distributing inherently dangerous items.” Clearly, accountability through legal action incentivizes manufacturers to develop safer products.
The legislation is straightforward and protective, stating that “the approval of the labeling of such pesticide by the Administrator, shall not be construed as a defense to any State law claim”—that, as the legislation reads, “registration of a pesticide and the approval of the labeling of such pesticide by the Administrator, shall be prima facie evidence (but not conclusive evidence) that the pesticide and its labeling comply with this Act.’’
Evidence of potential health effects beyond the registration review of pesticides cited in the legislation includes: a government report; an independent peer-reviewed study; data of the registrant; material obtained through legal discovery; a disclosure by a whistleblower; material from a congressional or other oversight investigation; and pesticide incident data under section 6(a)(2), which requires incident reporting by product manufacturers. The bill streamlines the process for manufacturer-initiated label changes that are more transparent of hazard risks than the EPA-approved label.
This new legislation also builds on the bipartisan vote, including 73 Republicans and a majority of Democrats, in the U.S. House of Representatives that stripped from the House Farm Bill a pesticide manufacturers’ liability shield for failure to warn on product labels, federal preemption of state and local pesticide laws, and the weakening of bedrock environmental law and their ability to regulate pesticides.
Thank you once again for affirming this basic principle of fair disclosure in commerc
