More than 200,000 Americans have sued Monsanto arguing that its blockbuster herbicide Roundup gave them cancer. 

They are farmers, groundskeepers, landscapers, and regular folks tending to their own yards. People who worked in fields growing genetically engineered, glyphosate-resistant crops, where Roundup (with its active ingredient, glyphosate) was sprayed in increasing amounts right on top of those crops. People who spent years spraying what they believed was a "safe" weedkiller, before being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.  

For more than a decade, juries across the country have heard their stories. They've listened to experts from both sides, considered scientific studies, and pored over a mountain of evidence, including incriminating company memos seeing the light of day for the first time. Again and again, they concluded that Monsanto (now Bayer) failed to warn the public about the cancer risks associated with Roundup. Those verdicts forced the company to pay over $11 billion to settle nearly 100,000 claims rather than risk resolving each claim individually, while over sixty thousand more cases remain pending. Monsanto even replaced glyphosate with other weed-killing ingredients in its residential Roundup formulations sold in stores like Home Depot across the country, in a transparent attempt to limit further liability for its product causing cancer in home users.  

Then came Monsanto v. Durnell. 

For over two decades, John Durnell sprayed Roundup to kill weeds in parks and playgrounds near his St. Louis, MO home. Like hundreds of thousands of other Roundup-using Americans, he contracted non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the very cancer associated with glyphosate use in multiple epidemiology studies of farmers. In 2023, a jury agreed that Roundup was a cause of his cancer, and ordered Monsanto to pay him $1.25 million in damages. Like other cancer victims, Durnell had alleged that Monsanto should have warned him about the potential cancer risks associated with glyphosate use. Monsanto appealed his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which just ruled in Monsanto's favor last week.  

When SCOTUS handed down its decision in Monsanto v. Durnell, it delivered a significant victory to Monsanto and the pesticide industry writ large. By holding that certain state law "failure-to-warn" claims are preempted (or prohibited) by federal pesticide law, the Court closed the courthouse doors on an important means for people harmed by toxic pesticides to hold manufacturers accountable. For thousands of cancer victims and their families, the decision represents a painful setback. It is another tragic example of this Supreme Court elevating corporate rights over human rights. 

But this is far from the end of the story. When regulators and courts fail in their duties to protect the public interest, nonprofits must step into the breach and fulfil that role. And the Durnell decision just made that public-interest-in-exile role more important than ever. 

A Decision Built on a Captured Regulatory System 

The Supreme Court's decision cited the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) classification of glyphosate as "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans," but the Court also correctly recognized that the EPA determination was found unlawful in a 2022 Center for Food Safety lawsuit. That federal court decision struck down EPA's human health determination, concluding that EPA violated its own scientific standards in concluding glyphosate posed no cancer risk.  

Before the now-cancelled 2020 cancer determination, the last time EPA actually made any other determination of glyphosate's cancer risk was over three decades ago, in 1993. That stale decision came in the wake of enormous pressure from Monsanto to reverse EPA's initial stance that glyphosate was a possible carcinogen, based on rare kidney tumors in glyphosate-fed mice, among other evidence. 

The 1993 determination also came long before the explosion in glyphosate's use due to Monsanto's genetically engineered glyphosate-resistant crops, and before the scores of scientific reports and farmer epidemiology studies creating a body of science which overwhelmingly shows the increased risk of cancer after glyphosate exposure. And it also arrived long before the 2025 retraction of a year 2000 study — ostensibly by independent scientists but actually ghost-written by Monsanto officers — that was among the most frequently cited studies cited by EPA and other regulators to support glyphosate's supposed safety. 

EPA's treatment of glyphosate is far from singular; it exposes a deeper crisis at the heart of American pesticide regulation. For decades, EPA has repeatedly approved dangerous pesticides while failing to require meaningful warnings about their risks. New 2026 research released by Center for Food Safety and our allies at the Center for Biological Diversity demonstrates just how systemic that failure has become. Over the last forty years, EPA has identified approximately 200 pesticide active ingredients that are "likely" or "possible" human carcinogens. Yet virtually none of the thousands of pesticide products containing those chemicals carry cancer warning labels. Instead, the agency has routinely allowed pesticides to remain on the market despite acknowledging cancer risks far exceeding EPA's own benchmark level of concern of one additional cancer case per one million exposed people. The result? People unwittingly spray products they have no idea may give them cancer, and unknowingly consume food and water contaminated with possible or likely carcinogens. Would pesticide users continue to spend billions on such products if their manufacturers were required to warn them of the cancer hazard?  

Why Lawsuits Matter 

The lawsuits against Monsanto transformed the public conversation about Roundup. Internal company documents revealed through the litigation showed extensive Monsanto efforts to unduly influence scientific research and pesticide regulators, and avoid warning consumers about potential cancer risks. Juries repeatedly concluded that Monsanto failed to adequately warn users that Roundup exposure could contribute to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Those verdicts led Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, to pay roughly $11 billion to settle approximately 100,000 claims, while tens of thousands more remain pending. Another Bayer-proposed $7.25 billion settlement is currently making its way through the courts (although this proposal would fail to cover most class members' expenses and has been accused in court of violating the Constitution and involving questionable ethics). 

The Durnell decision will make these cases harder to bring and win, eliminating one of the main causes of action. That said, the cancer cases will continue, under other legal theories not at issue in Durnell, which is why Monsanto has been seeking broader immunity, covering all such cases, in Congress. 

Still, the Durnell decision underscores why strong federal oversight is more essential than ever. If injured people are locked out of state courts to remedy corporate misconduct, then it becomes still more critical for EPA to prevent such injuries in the first place. The agency must fulfill its legal obligations to evaluate pesticides rigorously, require accurate warning labels, remove dangerous products from the market, and mitigate their harms when the science demands it.  

The decision similarly elevates the role of Congress: to place the public's rights over corporations' profit margins. And it reaffirms the role we all must play, by continuing to speak truth to power and demand our representatives protect the public interest. To their credit, some members of Congress are already moving to introduce legislative amendments and new bills to override this victory for chemical corporations. However, history suggests this shift will not happen without persistent public pressure and legal accountability. That's where stakeholders like the Center for Food Safety, with expertise in litigation, science, and legislative advocacy, play a vital role.