By Jessica Cusworth
With analysis by Sarah Carden
The U.S. Supreme Court recently handed Bayer-Monsanto a preliminary win in its ongoing effort to block thousands of Roundup cancer lawsuits by agreeing to review a $1.25 million verdict for a Missouri resident who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after decades of using the product.
This case raises a key legal question with critical implications for farmers, farmworkers, and consumers: Does federal pesticide law preempt state “failure-to-warn” claims that allow people harmed by pesticides to seek justice?
Bayer calls the Supreme Court’s decision “good news for farmers,” but it primarily benefits corporate interests, leaving farmers and farmworkers on the front lines with no recourse when harmed by Bayer’s products. Part of the problem is that farmers are often locked into systems that require these pesticides because a few companies, like Bayer, control both the seeds and the herbicides that those seeds are designed to work with. If the Supreme Court sides with Bayer, farmers would have even fewer avenues to hold these powerful corporations accountable for the harms caused by the production systems that they have shaped.
This case reflects a growing power imbalance as a handful of giant corporations leverage their tight control over our food and farm system to shape public policy, dodge accountability, and impede farmers’ rights and choices.
What the Supreme Court Is Being Asked to Decide
The core legal question under consideration is whether the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) pesticide approvals automatically override state laws that allow people to sue when companies fail to warn about known risks.
Critically, these failure-to-warn cases are not about punishing companies for honest mistakes. In order to win, a plaintiff must show that the product caused harm and prove the manufacturer failed to warn consumers about a known or knowable risk. In the case of Roundup, juries have repeatedly agreed that Bayer withheld or downplayed evidence linking glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup to cancer.
State tort law is one of the last remaining tools farmers, farmworkers, and consumers have to hold powerful corporations accountable when regulatory systems fall short. If the Supreme Court rules in Bayer’s favor, that tool could effectively disappear.
Bayer’s Strategy: Fear, Distorted Science, and Legal Immunity
Bayer’s Supreme Court fight is part of a broader misinformation and intimidation campaign. As Farm Action explained in our 2025 blog, Bayer has been pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to block these Roundup lawsuits: They’ve lobbied Congress, pressured regulators, pushed state-level pesticide preemption bills, threatened to pull products from the market, and are now asking the Supreme Court to wipe out state-level accountability altogether. The state-level preemption bills now moving through legislatures serve as a backstop, ensuring corporate immunity even if the Supreme Court doesn’t fully deliver it.
To support their narrative, Bayer leans on compromised science. For decades, regulators cited a 2000 Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology paper claiming glyphosate posed no cancer risk. That paper has since been retracted due to undisclosed conflicts of interest, ghostwriting by Monsanto employees, reliance on unpublished studies, and exclusion of long-term research. This distorted science shaped federal approvals and is now being used as a legal shield to argue that federal law should override state failure-to-warn claims.
This is exactly the system that Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) advocates have warned against: one that protects corporate power while silencing those harmed by toxic chemicals.
Corporate Influence Undermining Public Health Priorities
On the campaign trail and early in office, President Trump made clear his goal to “get toxins out of our environment [and] poisons out of our food supply,” responding to growing public pressure from voters to prioritize a healthy food system. He put action behind these promises early on in his administration by establishing the MAHA Commission to investigate and address the chronic disease crisis. Together, these moves signaled a willingness to confront powerful corporations whose lobbying has distorted public health priorities, and set expectations that corporate influence over food and farm policy would finally be challenged.
The administration’s early momentum was promising, with the highly anticipated MAHA Commission’s assessment report in May 2025 reflecting President Trump’s stated health priorities. It identified environmental chemical exposures, including pesticides like glyphosate, as contributors to chronic health risks. But that momentum didn’t last. The subsequent MAHA strategy report largely omitted those concerns and emphasized confidence in EPA’s existing review processes—a shift shaped by extensive engagement with agriculture and chemical industry stakeholders, including meetings with 140 agribusiness lobbyists during the drafting of the strategy report.
As industry pressure intensified, the administration’s posture toward pesticide accountability softened. It set the stage for President Trump’s Solicitor General, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, to urge the Supreme Court to take Bayer’s case, helping open the door for corporate immunity. While the move has drawn sharp criticism from advocates of the MAHA movement, administration officials like USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden have publicly applauded the decision, highlighting the growing divide between public promises and policy outcomes.
What’s at Stake
If the Supreme Court sides with Bayer, it would further entrench corporate power and cause farmers, farmworkers, and the public to lose one of the most important mechanisms for holding pesticide manufacturers accountable. Companies would be able to point to federal approval as a shield, even when evidence shows they failed to warn people about serious risks.
That outcome would not only contradict the MAHA Commission’s assessment report goals but also undermine the administration’s own campaign promises to confront chemical harms in the food system. The government cannot claim to prioritize public health while backing policies that strip harmed communities of their right to seek justice.
A Moment of Accountability
This case is a test—not just for the courts, but for policymakers who have claimed to champion a food and farm system that prioritizes public health over corporate profits.
A healthy food system requires more than rhetoric. It requires accountability, transparency, and the courage to stand up to corporate power. This Supreme Court case will help determine whether those values still have a place in U.S. agriculture policy.
