Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (1st District of Maine)
The Supreme Court’s decision in Monsanto v. Durnell is a devastating setback for Americans who deserve the right to hold powerful companies accountable for serious health harms.
While we feared the Court’s decision might go this way—thanks in large part to the Trump Administration’s support—I held out hope that the growing, bipartisan opposition to this liability shield would make clear just how much is at stake. From the People vs. Poison rally outside the Supreme Court to our recent win keeping a pesticide manufacturer liability shield out of the Farm Bill, advocates, lawmakers, farmers, and families have been sending a clear message: No chemical company should be able to write the rules, dodge accountability, and leave people and communities to pay the price.
Let’s be clear: The Court did not decide whether Roundup causes cancer. Instead, it ruled that, because EPA approved Roundup’s label without a cancer warning, federal pesticide law blocks this kind of state-law failure-to-warn claim. People who believe they were harmed by Roundup now face an even steeper path to justice, while Bayer gets exactly what it has been fighting for—a powerful new shield from accountability.
This decision exposes the Trump Administration’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda for what it is: nothing more than a hollow political slogan.
You cannot claim to care about Americans’ health while sending your Justice Department to the Supreme Court to side with Big Chemical. When forced to choose between public health and corporate power, Trump chose the latter.
Giant chemical companies have been trying to rig the system in their favor for years. Republicans in Congress attempted to slip language into a key spending bill that would have shielded pesticide manufacturers from accountability. I successfully led the effort to strip it from the final bill that passed both the House and Senate. Republicans tried and failed again in the Farm Bill. Now, after President Trump put his finger on the scales, Bayer has won in court what it could not get through Congress.
If the Supreme Court is going to put even more weight on EPA’s pesticide review and labeling process, then Congress and the President have a responsibility to fix the dangerous gap this decision exposes. EPA must be transparent, science-based, independent, and accountable to the public—not the industries it is supposed to regulate.
The people of Maine, and all Americans, deserve a justice system and regulatory structure that puts human health before corporate profits. No chemical company should be powerful enough to write the rules, dodge accountability, and leave families to pay the price.
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