The US Supreme Court sided with multinational giant Bayer on Thursday, overturning a lower court ruling that exposed the company to thousands of claims that the Monsanto weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.
In a 7-2 decision, the US high court sent back to a Missouri state court a $1.25 million jury award against the Germany-based company, concluding that the US Environmental Protection Agency’s determination that Roundup is not a carcinogen preempts state labelling requirements.
Shares of Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, soared 18% on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The litigation has cost the company billions of dollars.
The Supreme Court case stems from a suit brought by John Durnell, who had won a failure-to-warn suit in a Missouri court in 2024.
Durnell — who relied on Monsanto marketing that Roundup was safe to spray on clothing — blamed the product for his blood cancer diagnosis.
He argued that the International Agency for Research on Cancer considers glyphosate, one of Roundup’s ingredients, a probable human carcinogen.
But Bayer, whose case was backed by the administration of US President Donald Trump, argued before the conservative-dominated Supreme Court that it should be shielded from state lawsuits since the EPA approved the sale of Roundup to consumers and farmers without any warnings.
US insecticide law “demands uniformity and expressly preempts state labeling requirements that are in addition to or different from federal labeling requirements,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion, reversing the judgment of the Missouri Court of Appeals.
Bayer, which maintains that Roundup is safe, said in a statement the Supreme Court ruling “should help significantly contain the Roundup litigation after nearly a decade of legal battles.”
“The US Supreme Court decision is good for science, farmers and industries that depend on regulatory clarity for innovation,” Bayer said. “The ruling should result in the dismissal of current warning-based claims and bar future failure-to-warn claims.”
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