The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Monsanto's argument that federal pesticide law should shield it and parent company Bayer from tens of thousands of state lawsuits over Roundup since the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning label. The case could determine whether federal rules preempt state failure-to-warn claims without deciding whether glyphosate causes cancer. The Los Angeles Times reports: Some studies have found it is a likely carcinogen, and others concluded it does not pose a true cancer risk for humans. However, the court may free Monsanto and Bayer, its parent company, from legal claims from more than 100,000 plaintiffs who sued over their cancer diagnosis. The legal dispute involves whether the federal regulatory laws shield the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers. [...] "EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world's most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached that conclusion after studying the extensive body of science on glyphosate for over five decades," the company told the court in its appeal. They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products with Roundup, but said it would be "misbranded" with such a warning. Nonetheless, the "premise of this lawsuit, and the thousands like it, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the precise warning that EPA rejects," they said. On Friday, the court said in a brief order that it would decide "whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning." The court is likely to hear arguments in the case of Monsanto vs. Durnell in April and issue a ruling by late June.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.