No Warnings, No Justice
Retail giants like Walmart and Amazon can continue selling Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides without cancer warnings.
I am thinking about how bad things are nowadays. So I can go to Walmart and buy cancer in a bottle. Home gardeners, applicators, farmers, farm workers, and consumers can too. This is truly the dark ages. I don’t feel much protected out there.
Weren’t there once state rights? Weren’t states once considered the great incubators of new ideas and innovation? Did they not counter the weight of the federal government when it failed the people?
Well, government just gave the people the great fickle finger of fate with one toxic blow. When they get cancer, they can’t do a thing about it — not anymore. The toxic floodgates have been let wide open, and more and more children and adults will get sick and die not only from exposure to a carcinogen like Roundup (glyphosate) but also from the various diseases that come from 2,4-D, atrazine, paraquat, carbaryl, and other highly toxic hidden chemicals permeating our food supply starting in Cancer Alley, Louisiana, where so many of them are first manufactured to farmers and farm workers and their children and finally to consumers. Some kids are going to get leukemia or other cancers, a farmer will get Parkinson’s disease, and a child will be born a shade more dull, and that will happen child by child, sprout by sprout, across the land, due to the systemic poisoning that the court just approved.
As I write in The Environment, “This is thanks to the Supreme Court’s seven-to-two decision to shield pesticide companies from ‘failure to warn’ lawsuits. It is a decision that goes against science. It goes against the people, including, most of all, farmers and farm workers and their children, home gardeners, communities, school children, and others involved in its applications or exposed to drift and cross contamination, and it goes against those living with cancer, as if after years of applying a pesticide known to cause cancer, a farmer, farm worker, applicator, or gardener mysteriously gets Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL).
A man named John Durnell filed a lawsuit in a Missouri state court against Monsanto, arguing that the company’s weedkiller Roundup gave him cancer. This type of lawsuit is known as a ‘failure-to-warn’ claim. The state court agreed with Durnell, awarding him $1.25 million. Monsanto appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that Durnell should not have won because a federal law called the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) preempts — or bars — these failure-to-warn claims in state courts, as I report in The Environment. “Monsanto’s selective reading of the law ignores state authority to ban pesticides and the company’s ongoing duty to ensure its labels have adequate warnings and directions to protect the public. Under FIFRA, the fact that EPA has approved a given label does not provide a defense against a violation of this duty.”
However, EPA approval is often based on limited information at a single point in time, while the science around pesticide harms continues to develop. State-court litigation revealed that Monsanto ghostwrote articles the EPA relied on, dismissing those risks and failing to provide adequate warnings to the public. By cutting off these claims, the court has weakened one of the most important backstops protecting people when federal regulation falls short.
I’m going to spread the blame and share what activists and health-conscious consumers need to do next.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) considers glyphosate a carcinogen, associated with NHL, one of the commonest of the environmental cancers, as noted in Oncology Research. In late 2025, the scientific journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology retracted a hallmark 2000 review paper that concluded glyphosate was safe, reports The Washington Post. This now-disavowed 2000 paper was one of the most highly cited in the glyphosate safety discourse. It was frequently used by major regulatory bodies, including the EPA and Health Canada, to justify their safety assessments and support the continued approval of the weedkiller. Yet, virtually all epidemiological studies associate its use with NHL, as recently reported in medRxiv.
I’m blaming Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers for continuing to sell a dangerous chemical.
I accuse the Supreme Court of misapplication of the law and scientific ignorance. It could have gone differently.
Because state failure-to-warn lawsuits share this exact goal — ensuring a product adequately warns users of dangers — the dissent argued that states should be allowed to enforce it. This makes sense. Courts are often the citizens’ last chance for redress, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, this clause ensures that citizens can ask the government to correct wrongs or change policies without fear of punishment. It is one of five fundamental freedoms protected by the amendment, alongside speech, press, religion, and assembly. That right is now being denied. It could have been different. Progressive liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (joined by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch) argued that EPA approval of a pesticide for agricultural use should not conclusively shield companies from liability. They noted that federal law (FIFRA) forbids “misbranding.”
The Court could have easily relied on this precedent to allow Durnell’s state-level verdict to stand. Since federal law prohibits misbranded pesticides, states can essentially act in parallel to federal goals when holding companies liable for failing to list cancer risks.
Both the Supreme Court and the EPA are politicized because of who the people elected as president and to Congress. Our votes matter. So I do blame millions of people who have voted for the most anti-environmental president of all time. But I blame US. We need to educate children in schools about hidden chemical toxins and their impact on our environmental health. Kids need to learn shopping values. They need to take history lessons on how their shopping decisions and public officials affect their personal health. I strongly support this kind of education in the school systems, and I have participated in such pilot programs.
We need to educate. Kids want to know if their deodorant will cause cancer, or what Roundup really is, and where it is, and how to look out for it.
But in one fell swoop, the court closed the book on science and said we can only know as the failed EPA does. That is tragic: our issues dealing with hidden chemical toxins are highly complex and difficult because we are dealing with stealth villains that sneak into our bodies with corporate assurances, little if any regulation, and government backing of the poisoning of our bodies. But the courts could shine light despite all of these failures; we are fighting not only for freedom but for our future.
So what do we need to do? We need to amend FIFRA to make explicit that federal law does not preempt state failure-to-warn claims.
Thankfully, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced the People Over Poison Act, legislation to protect Americans’ right to hold pesticide manufacturers accountable under state law when they fail to warn consumers about the risks of their products. The bipartisan bill comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bayer.
Pingree and Massie’s People Over Poison Act would reverse the Monsanto v. Durnell ruling by explicitly stating that FIFRA does not bar or limit state tort claims related to pesticide labeling or packaging—thereby preserving the right of people harmed by pesticides to seek accountability in court.
The implications extend far beyond Roundup and glyphosate. The ruling could affect future claims involving other pesticides and chemical products, including cases where farmers, farmworkers, landscapers, groundskeepers, and consumers allege they were not adequately warned about serious health risks.
Pingree, a longtime farmer and member of the House Agriculture Committee, successfully removed a liability shield for Big Chemical from the FY2026 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill. After similar language appeared in the draft Farm Bill, Pingree led an amendment during Committee markup to strip the language. She and Rep. Massie introduced the same amendment when the Farm Bill came before the full House of Representatives. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s (R-Fla.) identical amendment passed with strong bipartisan support. Earlier this month, Luna and Pingree introduced the Paraquat Prevention Act, legislation that would ban the herbicide paraquat.
In February, President Trump signed an Executive Order to increase domestic production of glyphosate—a widely used weedkiller that has been linked to multiple health issues, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In response, Pingree and Massie introduced the No Immunity for Glyphosate Act, which would undo Trump’s Executive Order.
Do you vote? Here are some target districts for the 2026 midterms. Some 142 members (135 Republican lawmakers and six Democrats plus an independent) voted to keep controversial pesticide liability shields (Sections 10205, 10206, and 10207) in the House Farm Bill. You can view the full official Roll Call 148 via the Office of the Clerk to identify the specific representatives who voted for or against the measure.
All Republican members of the House Agriculture Committee voted in favor of the Farm Bill’s pesticide immunity provisions during the committee markup. The House Ag Committee Republicans who favored the legislation include:
Republican Members (All in Favor of the Bill/Language):
Glenn “GT” Thompson (PA) — Chairman
Frank Lucas (OK)
Austin Scott (GA) — Vice Chair
Rick Crawford (AR)
Scott DesJarlais (TN)
David Rouzer (NC)
Trent Kelly (MS)
Don Bacon (NE)
Mike Bost (IL)
Dusty Johnson (SD)
Jim Baird (IN)
Tracey Mann (KS)
Randy Feenstra (IA)
Mary Miller (IL)
Brad Finstad (MN)
John Rose (TN)
Ronny Jackson (TX)
Marc Molinaro (NY)
Monica De La Cruz (TX)
John Duarte (CA)
Zach Nunn (IA)
Derrick Van Orden (WI)
Max Miller (OH)
Kat Cammack (FL)
Dan Newhouse (WA)
Brandon Williams (NY)
Tracey Moore (or equivalent newly assigned GOP freshmen for the 119th/120th Congresses)
These Democrats on the committee voted to advance the overall Farm Bill with the provisions included:
David Scott (GA) (deceased)
Jim Costa (CA)
Salud Carbajal (CA)
Don Davis (NC)
Shri Thanedar (MI)
Adam Gray (CA)
Shomari Figures (AL)
We need to vote in public representatives who are with us on this issue.
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My new book, Raising Healthy Kids: Protecting Your Children from Hidden Chemical Toxins, is available at Amazon.com. Subscribe to my mypodcast at https://www.youtube.com/@officialdavidsteinman.
