'Betrayal': Trump DOJ sides with Roundup maker over cancer victims in Supreme Court case

The Trump administration is pushing for the US Supreme Court to shield the manufacturer of Roundup from thousands of state lawsuits alleging that its widely used herbicide product causes cancer.

On Monday, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer recommended that the high court agree to hear a challenge to a Missouri jury’s verdict in 2023 that awarded $1.25 million to a man named John Durnell, who claimed that the product caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Bayer, the agribusiness giant that purchased the manufacturer of Roundup, the agribusiness giant Monsanto, in 2018, immediately challenged the verdict.

In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifiedglyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on “limited evidence.”

That evidence became less limited in 2019, when a prominent meta-analysis by a team of environmental health researchers found that people exposed to glyphosate at the highest levels had a 41% higher risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma than those who weren’t.

There are nearly 4,500 Roundup claims currently pending in federal court, and at least 24 cases have gone to trial since October 2023. They make up just a fraction of the more than 170,000 claims filed.

According to Bloomberg,Bayer has already been forced to pay out more than $10 billion in verdicts and settlements over the product, which has caused a massive drain on the company’s stock price.

In what it said was an effort to “manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns,” Bayer removed glyphosate-based herbicides from the residential market in 2023, switching to formulas that “rely on alternative active ingredients.”

That didn’t stop the lawsuits from coming. Durnell’s victory was the first successful case brought against Bayer outside California, the only state that labels the product as carcinogenic. That in Missouri opened the floodgates in other states, and plaintiffs subsequently won sizable payouts in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

But now the Trump administration is trying to help the company skirt further accountability. Sauer, who is tasked with arguing for the government in nearly every Supreme Court case, filed a 24-page brief stating that there is a lack of clarity on whether states have the authority to determine whether Bayer and Monsanto violated the law by failing to warn customers about potential cancer risks from Roundup.

Bayer argues that these cases are preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which forbids states from enacting labeling requirements more stringent than those recommended by the federal government.

Sauer agreed with Bayer, stating in the brief that the US Environmental Protection Agency “has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings.”

In 2016 and again in 2020, the EPA indeed classified glyphosate as “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans” following agency assessments. However, in 2022, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals voided this assessment, finding that the agency applied “inconsistent reasoning” in its review of the science.

Among the justifications for the ruling were that the EPA relied heavily on unpublished, non-peer-reviewed studies submitted to regulators by Monsanto and other companies that manufacture glyphosate. The agency also largely disregarded findings from animal studies included by the IARC, which showed a strong link between glyphosate and cancer.

“The World Health Organization has recognized glyphosate as a probable carcinogen while the EPA continues to twist itself into pretzels to come to the opposite conclusion,” Lori Ann Burd, a staff attorney and director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health program, told Common Dreams.

Notably, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. built his national profile campaigning against the dangers of pesticides and railing against regulatory capture by big business.

Kennedy served as an attorney for Dewayne Johnson, the first plaintiff to win damages against Monsanto in 2018, where a jury determined that Roundup had contributed to his cancer.

“If my life were a Superman comic, Monsanto would be my Lex Luthor,” Kennedy said in a 2020 Facebook post. “I’ve seen this company as the enemy of every admirable American value.”

During Kennedy’s 2024 presidential run, he pledged to “ban the worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries.”

But after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump’s HHS Secretary, he began to sing a different tune. As Investigate Midwestnoted, his “Make America Healthy Again” commission’s introductory report made no mention of glyphosate.

Meanwhile, he reassured the pesticide industry that it had nothing to worry about: “There’s a million farmers who rely on glyphosate. 100% of corn in this country relies on glyphosate. We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model,” he said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.

The Trump EPA has deregulated toxic chemicals across the board over the past year. It rolled back protections against per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often referred to as “forever chemicals,” in drinking water, which have many documented health risks. It has also declined to ban the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders in children.

Elizabeth Kucinich, the former director of policy at the Center for Food Safety, described the US Department of Justice’s effort to shield Bayer as another “betrayal of MAHA health promises.” Her husband, the two-time Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, worked as the campaign manager for RFK Jr.'s 2024 presidential bid.

“This is regulatory capture, not public protection,” she said. “This action shields chemical manufacturers from accountability by elevating a captured federal regulatory process over the lived harm of real people. That is anti-life, and it is exactly what millions of MAHA voters believed they were voting against.”

Food & Water Watch staff attorney Dani Replogle said the DOJ filing “encourages the Supreme Court to slam judiciary doors in the faces of cancer patients across the country.”

“No political posturing can undo the clear message this brief sends to sick Americans harmed by toxic pesticides,” she continued. “Trump has Bayer’s back, not theirs.”