Supreme Court to hear arguments in landmark Roundup weedkiller case

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/climate/supreme-court-bay...

As is so often the case for controversies before the Supreme Court, this case isn't so much about glyphosate as it is about the interface between federal and state law.

Since 1991, the EPA has held that glyphosate is not carcinogenic; it was (at the time) categorized "Group E", which means that not only is there not evidence for it being carcinogenic, but that there is material evidence that it is not. Later, IARC (in a decision that was controversial among global public health agencies) listed glyphosate as a 2A probable carcinogen, alongside red meat, potatoes, deep fryer oil, and a slew of scary chemicals that includes many other insecticides and herbicides.

States like California enacted labeling-law regimes that key in part off IARC's classification, which meant that in those states Roundup products required labeling. Monsanto/Bayer lost civil cases based on failure to label.

That's the domain-specific stuff. What the court likely cares about is the preemption doctrine. In a variety of different situations, competing state and federal statutes are by explicit or implicit preemption rules. In many cases, federal preemption is a result of bargains with industry: for instance, we got programs like Energy Star after negotiations where industry (and the states dependent on those industries) made concessions to the federal government in exchange for exemptions from state regulation, which is why there's controversy over local municipal ordinances that attempt to ban gas ranges (apropos nothing, but: combustion products of gas ranges: also IARC carcinogens).

There's a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself (as someone else on this thread pointed out, glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments), but rather with the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops.

For those people it's worth knowing that the civil liability Monsanto/Bayer is trying to avoid here is approximately the same as the reason Jays Potato Chips bags sometimes have "Not For Sale In California" labeling. Nobody has declared that Roundup is categorically unsafe. Some states have declared that you have to label it the same way you would a gas station or Disneyland ride.

If all of agriculture went fully organic tomorrow, no fertilizer, no fungicide, no insecitizide, no herbicide- billions would starve. Organic advocates who do not present viable alternatives are monsterous.

We almost saw that played out in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_economic_crisis_(20... - and its a call for genocide on the economic less prosperous by economic means. It should be treated as that - regardless of the appeal of the ideology pushing for such measures.

And that is coming from someone rooting for weeding robots to remove parts of the pressure to use herbicides.

It's striking how many of these "product safety" cases are decided in the court of public opinion, independent of actual scientific merit. The case of DDT was pretty interesting. More recently, we have microplastics - no one has really shown they're dangerous to humans, but there's enough hand-waving that "everyone knows" they're killing us. And aspartame, etc...

Glyphosate is probably the safest of the things people spray their lawns with. I don't think we should - the worst you get on a typical suburban lawn if you mow but don't spray are dandelions and clover - but it's probably not giving you cancer. As for food... again, there are far worse, more persistent pesticides that escape this kind of scrutiny.

Still probably the safest herbicide, mainly because the competition (organophosphates, etc.) is so much worse.

My personal interest in this case is that I have used Roundup for years. What are the odds that the new formulation without glyphosate is safer than the old one? Are we replacing it with something worse?

A note: It appears that the picture in the article is if the new formulation for tonight, not the one containing glyphosate.

The evidence on glyphosphate causing cancer isn’t particularly strong.

I wouldn’t bathe in the stuff, but the data strongly indicates it’s one of the more benign compounds used in agriculture and landscaping.

Isn't there some bureaucratic way to just tie up the Supreme Court for three years? Their rulings have been extremely damaging and we need a sane balance to return before important stuff like this ends up being decided.

Only a matter of time before japanese knotwood takes over north america. Glyphosate seems to be the only thing that stops this aggressive weed

I am really very confused because I have seen documentaries related to this[1] and would like to understand where are the errors when there are more cancer cases close to these areas.

[1] Cancer incidence and death rates in Argentine rural towns surrounded by pesticide-treated agricultural land: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221339842...

Goats > glyphosate

Roundup has saved far more lives than it may have cut short, if any.

A reminder that most US non-organic oats contain high levels of glyphosate residues because farmers use it as a desiccant to reduce harvest fuel consumption.

And also almost all bread in the US including organic contain 10-1000 ppb of glyphosate.

America's food supply is fucked because of rampant greed, a lack of proper regulation, and a lack of application of the precautionary principle.

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