US supreme court rules in favor of former Monsanto company in pesticide case

The US supreme court has ruled in favor of the former Monsanto company in a closely watched case that limits the way for people to sue pesticide companies for alleged illnesses or injuries. The decision was made in a 7-2 vote, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh offering the majority opinion and Justice Jackson writing the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch. The case, Monsanto v Durnell , specifically dealt with the question of whether a federal law that gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory authority over pesticides preempts state claims that a company failed to warn users of certain product risks when the EPA itself has not required such warnings. In its ruling, the court said the EPA controls pesticide labels to ensure nationwide uniformity, and because the agency evaluated Roundup and decided a cancer warning was unnecessary, state-level lawsuits demanding such a warning conflict with federal law The case at the heart of the decision deals with Monsanto’s glyphosate – a weedkilling chemical used in the popular Roundup brand and numerous other herbicide products sold by the former Monsanto company, which is now owned by Germany’s Bayer. The chemical has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015. …