WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in Monsanto v. Durnell that federal pesticide law preempts state-court verdicts forcing a cancer warning onto a product the EPA has cleared dozens of times over four decades. The 7–2 decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, reverses the Missouri Court of Appeals and holds that a state jury cannot impose a label “in addition to or different from” the one federal law requires.
The Consumer Choice Center, which has long warned that mass-tort litigation functions as a shadow regulatory regime, welcomed the ruling.
“For years, a single fringe finding plus a friendly state jury added up to an $11 billion shakedown of a product every serious regulator on the planet has called safe,” said Yaël Ossowski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center. “The Court just told the trial bar that EPA’s label is the label. You don’t get to relitigate forty years of science one Missouri courtroom at a time, then send consumers the bill in higher prices and worse products.”
The case turned on whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a state failure-to-warn claim when EPA has reviewed glyphosate repeatedly, declined to require a cancer warning, and requires manufacturers to use the label it approved. The majority said it does. Justice Kavanaugh framed the stakes plainly during argument: a label that is “illegal in one state and legal in another” is the opposite of the uniformity Congress wrote into the statute in 1972.
Ossowski noted the breadth of the coalition behind the result. The majority included Justices Sotomayor and Kagan alongside the Chief Justice and the Court’s conservatives — a lineup that undercuts any claim this was a partisan favor to industry.
“This wasn’t ideology. It was seven justices reading a statute that means what it says,” said Ossowski. “Congress built one national label so a farmer in Iowa and a gardener in California follow the same rules. Letting the most aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers in the most favorable venue overwrite that label isn’t consumer protection, it’s a tax on everyone who’d rather have a weed killer that works, an affordable baby formula, and a gas stove that stays on.”
The ruling carries weight well beyond glyphosate. The same litigation model — latch onto an outlier claim, file thousands of suits in friendly jurisdictions, consolidate into a multidistrict engine until settlement is the only rational option — is already being aimed at gas stoves, talc, baby food, and “forever chemicals.” Today’s decision removes one of its most reliable tools wherever a federal agency has already approved a product’s label.
“A real tort system handles slip-and-falls and genuine negligence. It was never meant to let a jury’s weekend reading of toxicology rewrite the rules for an entire industry. The Court restored that line today, and consumers are better off for it,” concluded Ossowski.
The Consumer Choice Center will continue to track the next wave of mass-tort targets and to defend the principle that scientific and safety determinations belong with accountable federal regulators, not the plaintiffs’ bar, and this is how to truly keep our justice system open and available for American consumers with legitimate claims.
The Consumer Choice Centre is an independent, nonpartisan consumer advocacy group championing the benefits of freedom of choice, innovation, and abundance in everyday life for consumers in over 100 countries. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Brussels, Washington, Ottawa, Brasilia, London, Geneva, and more.
Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org.