What the U.S. Supreme Court’s Pesticide Ruling Means for Gardeners and Farm Workers

In June, the United States Supreme Court ruled that state goverments’ duty-to-warn laws do not oblige chemical manufacturer Monsanto to disclose a cancer risk on its pesticide labels. Monsanto manufactures the well-known pesticide Roundup that has been the subject of thousands of lawsuits in the U.S. and Canada.

The company argued that if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not require a cancer warning label, states cannot hold it liable in court for failing to warn consumers about cancer risks.

In their decision, the U.S. Supreme Court made no pronouncements on whether glyphosate causes cancer, only that the EPA is the sole arbiter of label warnings. The decision also forbade anyone else from issuing cancer warnings — including states, lower courts and manufacturers — unless the EPA approves.

The EPA maintains that there is “no evidence that glyphosate causes cancer in humans.” However, in 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphostate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”