(Beyond Pesticides, July 2-3, 2026) Our call on Independence Day for freedom from the toxic chemicals that tear apart our families and the ecosystems on which all life depends is proclaimed this July 4th with even greater urgency than last year. The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last week in Monsanto v. Durnell—releasing Monsanto-Bayer of liability for failing to warn those harmed by pesticides—enshrines in our daily lives the power of chemical companies to poison and contaminate with impunity. What did the majority of the Supreme Court justices say in supporting the right of chemical companies to poison without warning? The justices opined that, if they were to support the original plaintiff diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma after using the Monsanto weedkiller RoundupTM without any cancer warning on the label, it would “expose manufacturers to potentially massive tort liability for doing what EPA required.”
And that is exactly what happened when juries across the U.S. issued verdicts against Monsanto amounting to billions of dollars since 2018. The justices could not let that stand. Instead, the justices, in putting the freedom of chemical companies to poison for profit without notification above the rights of people to be warned, have codified a new tragic low in the protection of life and freedom from pesticides. This happens all in the context of chemical industry-influenced federal law (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act/FIFRA) being interpreted by the Court to take away the right to hold companies accountable through state common law, failure to warn lawsuits, when EPA only requires labeling for acute effects (e.g., headaches, nausea, dizziness, respiratory and eye damage) and is silent on requiring labeling for chronic effects like cancer, neurological, immunological, and reproductive harm, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and more.
