{"id":58695,"date":"2026-07-21T17:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/58695\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T17:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T17:55:13","slug":"bayer-won-its-roundup-case-where-does-that-leave-thousands-of-pending-lawsuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/58695\/","title":{"rendered":"Bayer won its Roundup case. Where does that leave thousands of pending lawsuits?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want more news about agriculture and the environment?\u00a0Sign up for the Harvest newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for our latest reporting, plus behind-the-scenes exclusives.<\/p>\n

People who claim the popular weedkiller Roundup caused their cancer will now have a harder time suing its manufacturer after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court decided last month that Roundup maker Bayer is not responsible for providing a cancer warning label on the product. That\u2019s because the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates U.S. labels, has not found the herbicide to be cancerous.<\/p>\n

The ruling overturns a 2019 Missouri court decision, where a jury awarded St. Louis resident John Durnell $1.25 million based on the claim that Roundup caused his blood cancer and the company failed to warn him. And it derails tens of thousands of similar lawsuits against the company.<\/p>\n

In a statement<\/a>, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson said the decision provides clarity for Bayer and companies like it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis litigation has enormous costs for the company and has impacted public trust,\u201d he said in the statement. \u201cThe decision brings overdue justice on an issue that should have been clarified much earlier. It\u2019s time to put it behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some agriculture groups also praised the ruling for adding clarity for farmers, including the\u00a0National Corn Growers Association<\/a>, the\u00a0Illinois Soybean Association<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Modern Ag Alliance.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFarmers rely on clear, consistent pesticide labels and predictable rules to make informed decisions,\u201d said Bryan Severs, Illinois Soybean Board chairman, in a statement. \u201cThe Court\u2019s ruling provides clarity on federal pesticide regulation and the role of EPA-approved labels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other groups, like the\u00a0National Family Farm Coalition<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Illinois Stewardship Alliance<\/a>\u00a0say the ruling is a loss for farmers.<\/p>\n

Aaron Lehman is the president of the Iowa Farmers Union. He remembers using Roundup to spot-treat weeds on his family\u2019s farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis ruling just makes it so much harder for our farmers to use the court system to defend their health, and it creates a disincentive for the manufacturers to make safe, effective herbicides that farmers need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darin Luneckas is an attorney in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who specializes in personal injury and workers compensation cases, including cases involving Roundup exposure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a lot different, as far as how these are litigated now, as a result of the Supreme Court decision, because the easiest path forward, the failure to warn type of claim, is now gone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said existing lawsuits have been significantly weakened by this decision and will now have to shift strategies to move forward. For example, they might have to argue that there was a defect in the design of the product or that Bayer failed to properly test the product.<\/p>\n

He said changing course will be expensive because attorneys will need to consult a completely different set of experts to prove either of those strategies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018When does EPA have a duty to act?\u2019<\/p>\n

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup\u2019s agriculture products, is a powerful herbicide that targets plants that compete with crops like corn and soybeans. It quickly became popular in the agriculture industry especially in the late 1990s, when St. Louis company Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer, started producing Roundup Ready corn and soybean seeds. The genetically modified seeds are resistant to glyphosate, meaning farmers can spray the chemical directly on the crops.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people have taken Monsanto and Bayer to court claiming the herbicide caused their cancer. Bayer recently proposed a $7.25 billion settlement to resolve many of those cases, which is expected to go in front of a judge next month,\u00a0Reuters reports.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"AKyle Pyatt\/Harvest Public Media Farmers commonly use glyphosate and other herbicides on cornfields.<\/p>\n

When Durnell won his case in Missouri, Bayer appealed, arguing that it went against the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which regulates herbicides like Roundup.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s decision last month fell in line with an old precedent from 1803 \u2013 if a state law and a federal law are regulating the same thing, but their regulations are different or opposed, then the federal law takes precedence.<\/p>\n

Brigit Rollins is a staff attorney with the National Agricultural Law Center, which researches and communicates food and agriculture law. She\u2019s been following the Roundup court cases for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

She said the EPA has a legal duty to make sure chemicals are not misbranded \u2013 which includes adding a cancer label without proof of a cancer risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen does EPA have a duty to act?\u201d she said. \u201cAnd what EPA has maintained is, \u2018If we have not determined that this product is carcinogenic, or is likely to be carcinogenic; if we put a cancer warning label on this product, even though we have not found this product to be cancerous, that would be misbranding the pesticide.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She said people suing over cancer claims might now have to try appealing directly to the EPA, rather than taking cases to the courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we might end up seeing is folks petitioning the EPA to revise the labels\u2026which is probably going to be far more time consuming,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization that focuses on cancer research, has found glyphosate as likely carcinogenic to humans.<\/p>\n

Yet Lynelle Phillips, an associate professor of health sciences at the University of Missouri, said it\u2019s extremely difficult to find causal links between Roundup and cancer.<\/p>\n

She said the existing research is varied in their approaches and results, which she attributes to the challenges that come with studying exposure to toxic substances and the onset of illness like cancer. She said it could take upwards of 30 years for cancer to show up.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo properly study this,\u201d she said, \u201cYou would have to follow a cohort of people who were exposed to Roundup or glyphosate through time for many decades to really have a solid case for the risk associated with that. That\u2019s super expensive, and people don\u2019t want to wait that long for answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said there are still gaps in epidemiologists\u2019 understanding of what causes cancers like non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope one outcome of this is that more studies are funded so that we can really understand what happened and why have these people suffered,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause no one really knows what causes non-Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was produced in partnership with\u00a0Harvest Public Media<\/a>, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want more news about agriculture and the environment?\u00a0Sign up for the Harvest newsletter\u00a0for our latest reporting, plus behind-the-scenes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21161],"tags":[3556,21182,18167,45870,45871,924,29196],"class_list":["post-58695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bayer","tag-agriculture","tag-bayer","tag-farming","tag-harvest-public-media","tag-harvest-share","tag-health","tag-herbicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}