Monsanto v. Durnell Oral Argument

The Supreme Court heard arguments in [Monsanto v. Durnell, examining whether pesticide companies were immune from state-level lawsuits if the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved their product labels. In 2019, John Durnell sued Monsanto in Missouri state court, alleging that his exposure to Monsanto’s product Roundup and its ingredient glyphosate caused him to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer. A jury ruled in favor of Durnell on a failure-to-warn claim. But Monsanto argued that federal law (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act) overrode Durnell’s claim, contending it was unlawful to create new labeling that differed from labeling already approved by the EPA. The company also argued that the EPA determined that glyphosate did not cause cancer in humans, in contradiction to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which did classify glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic.” German company Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018.