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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.
>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.
It was mentioned on a podcast recently that in many cases, the SC is not making a decision on what should/shouldn't happen/be the policy/is correct or whatever. They are deciding which layer of government gets to decide a given question. The Executive Branch? Legislation? Constitution? Who is the controlling entity?
Now, in a practical sense, by the time it gets to the SC, making a decision on who gets to decide, is, functionally, picking what the outcome is, since the various layers of government have already made their positions clear.
But the upshot is, if one is upset with what happens with a given policy after a SC decision, in many cases (although not all), the proper target of one's ire should not be the SC; since what they are usually saying is something like "this is something that is controlled by statute. If the statute is dumb/bad/poorly written, that is not our fault nor within our control, take it up with Congress to rewrite the statue", and instead one should be upset with whoever the controlling entity is for doing a bad job (in recent years: most commonly congress, not so much for doing a bad job so much as not doing any job)
Important to note it's not Glyphosate on trial, it's Roundup. There is a huge gulf between studies and conclusions on Glyphosate, and studies and conclusions on Roundup. Glyphosate is the safest and most effective herbicide known to mankind. Roundup - which includes Glyphosate, in addition to other additives - may be unnecessarily dangerous.
Also worth noting that Monsanto could stop selling Roundup entirely, and it wouldn't really matter. Monsanto's Glyphosate patent expired, so you can get cheaper Glyphosate from many different manufacturers. Which is great, because it means we can avoid the potentially-more-dangerous Roundup, and use the simpler base chemical instead. Distancing the pesticide from the "evil corporation" might actually make people less afraid of it.
There are numerous studies that show glyphosate binds with aluminum and other metals, having negative impacts on public health.
"Aluminum and Glyphosate Can Synergistically Induce Pineal Gland Pathology: Connection to Gut Dysbiosis and Neurological Disease"
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=53106
"Glyphosate, a chelating agent—relevant for ecological risk assessment?"
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5823954/
"Glyphosate complexation to aluminium(III). An equilibrium and structural study in solution using potentiometry, multinuclear NMR, ATR–FTIR, ESI-MS and DFT calculations"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01620...
A key paper on its safety from 2000 was retracted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161125
Like the tobacco industry before them, a Monsanto employee proposed producing a scientific paper with outside scientists: “by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak” — see https://retractionwatch.com/2025/12/04/glyphosate-safety-art...
Monsanto is pretty consistent about trying to change the noun to glyphosate from roundup any chance they get.
If you refer to it as glyphosate, as GP does, that either means you've fallen victim to their PR campaign, or labels you as a paid astroturfer.
The best-reasoned criticism of glyphosate is that it disrupts the gut biome (this is a fact). I suspect that many "gluten allergies" are actually gut biome problems from glyphosate-desiccated wheat.
> 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.
I know what you meant, and I suspect everyone reading it does too, but this is the type of sentence where the ambiguity amuses me. It's certainly true that most of the controversies before the Supreme Court aren't about glyphosate!
These aren't labeling cases. Durnell is the one the Supreme Court took, but it's one of tens of thousands. John Durnell sued Monsanto in Missouri state court after getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from twenty years of spraying Roundup as the "spray guy" for his neighborhood, and the jury gave him $1.25 million for his cancer, not a fine for a missing sticker. The legal theory is "failure to warn," but that's a tort claim about whether Monsanto adequately communicated the risk to users who then got hurt, not a regulatory question about what text has to appear on the bottle. Earlier California verdicts followed suit. Juries found Monsanto liable for the plaintiffs' cancer under regular product liability law. But, none of these are Prop 65 enforcement actions. [0]
The Jays chips comparison cuts the other way. CA's Prop 65 warning for glyphosate got blocked by a federal court in 2020, the Ninth Circuit upheld the block in 2023, and Prop 65 warnings for acrylamide in food were permanently shut down last May. So... California isn't actually making Roundup carry a Prop 65 warning, which is what your chips comparison assumes. The real question in Durnell is whether federal pesticide law stops a Missouri jury from finding Bayer liable for a specific person's cancer. Pretty different from whether you slap a warning sticker on a bag of chips (and Jay's doesn't carry a "Not for Sale" in CA -that's generally smaller companies who couldn't afford reformulation but the reality is they likely just didn't sell there). [1]
[0] https://legal-planet.org/2026/02/03/pesticides-cancer-and-fa... [1] https://www.greenbergglusker.com/publications/court-finds-re...
> 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.
I still don’t understand why people seem to care about genetically modified glyphosate tolerant soybeans and corn, they’re mostly fed to animals anyways.
Crossbreeding plants is genetic modification.
> a weird backstory to public opposition to glyphosate which has very little to do with glyphosate itself
Is it required that the public have a "good reason" for wanting something?
> glyphosate is relatively benign and relatively inert compared other common crop and landscape treatments
We used to spray DDT everywhere. This isn't exactly a resounding recommendation. Perhaps there's a case for using as little additives in farming as is possible.
> the idea that glyphosate is part of the technology stack of GM crops
Is this true? Can't we we give in on glyphosphate without losing GMOs?
It sounds like this would actually be good to decide now if the court were truly a "conservative" court - there is no legitimate reason for preemption to apply to labeling laws (even as broken as California's labeling law is), as labeling a product a certain way is not a mutually-exclusive action. But I expect the rank hypocrisy will win out, especially with the "culture war" backdrop of California delenda est.
So what do you think?
> 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.
Excuse me if I dont believe "this stuff isnt harmful".
And Arsenic was once safe.
Asbestos was the most amazing fireproof wonder material.
Thalidomide was a wonder drug with no side effects.
Tetraethyl lead was perfectly safe everywhere.
Fen-phen was a great diet drug.
Id also add "consumption of fluoride in water supply" (topical/toothpaste makes sense, consumption does not).
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.
Well I don't know of people claiming that microplastics are "killing us", there are dozens of papers that implicate microplastics in negative health effects from hearts to intestines, to sperm.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09524
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c03924
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-39...
There are a lot of studies that find correlations, and then are studies like this one that show that the direct introduction of microplastics alters cell functions negatively:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12692081/
I think at this point we should stop talking about how "there's no data" or "no studies" and "no one has shown" and graduate to "oh, maybe should figure out the extent of the damage."
Microplastic pollution is a global problem amongst a whole host of global pollution problems. We'd do well to try to figure out how bad it is, because it isn't going away. Oh, and we should probably work on fixing all of our pollution problems, especially cumulative ones like this.
> Glyphosate is probably the safest of the things people spray their lawns with.
Glyphosate kills grass, so I would not recommend this unless you are planning to reseed from scratch (or replace the grass with something else).
Are there "Roundup Ready" grass seeds?
> the worst you get on a typical suburban lawn if you mow but don't spray are dandelions and clover
I also get a lot of morning glory AKA bindweed that kills my grass. But spraying doesn't really help with that anyway, so :shrug:.
People are usually spraying broadleaf herbicides on their lawn like 2,4-D to control things like dandelions and yard plantains. Glyphosate just kills everything. Personally I only use it very selectively on poison ivy.
Worth noting here that the trier of fact in this case mostly agrees with you about this stuff; the issue is that the state statutes in question created strict liability conditions for failure to comply with warning label regimes. The plaintiff brought substantive charges about Roundup to the case, and the jury rejected them.
Still probably the safest herbicide, mainly because the competition (organophosphates, etc.) is so much worse.
From an environmental perspective you are probably right. One of the nice things is that glyphosate, unlike most herbicides, is broken down quickly by soil bacteria.
The longer term issue is evolved weed resistance due to its over use with "Roundup Ready" crops and for end of the season dry down.
The one I'm seeing now for crops (along with GMO crops to resist it) is Liberty, generic name glufosinate. What's interesting about it is that it's a natural product (although obtained in bulk by synthesis) produced by several species of Streptomyces soil bacteria.
What point are you trying to illuminate with this comment?
A 22 caliber is safer than a 40 caliber. But, I still wouldn’t a hole made in me from either.
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.
WHO classifies it as "Probably carcinogenic to humans". But it's important to talk about the exposure model.
Glyphosate in our food supply - almost no evidence of cancer risk. (The gut microbiome is affected though).
Direct and sustained contact to glyphosate as an agricultural worker - potentially very severe risks, particularly non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The data is strong but epidemiological.
So yeah, I think your conclusion is roughly correct. Don't bathe in it. Probably avoid using it at home or work. But otherwise, its not a serious risk to consumers.
> The evidence on glyphosphate causing cancer isn’t particularly strong.
This may be the case.
But I remember tobacco execs testifying under oath in the mid 90s that nicotine wasn't addictive and that there wasn't strong evidence smoking directly caused cancer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Berkshire
https://senate.ucsf.edu/tobacco-ceo-statement-to-congress
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/15/us/tobacco-chiefs-say-cig...
> The executives also made a number of other notable admissions, including these:
> * Cigarettes may cause lung cancer, heart disease and other health problems, but the evidence is not conclusive.
> * Despite earlier denials, a Philip Morris study that suggested that animals could become addicted to nicotine was suppressed in 1983 and 1985.
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...
I'm assuming Clarence Thomas, formerly a lawyer for Monsanto, will again not recuse himself, just as he did not for General Electric Co. v. Joiner (1997), Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms (2010) or Bowman v. Monsanto Co. (2013), and purely coincidentally no doubt, ruled for Monsanto.
The rule of law is well and truly dead in the United States.
They'll rule in favor of whoever has the most money.
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.
Alito and Thomas are retiring while Trump is in office.
Only a matter of time before japanese knotwood takes over north america. Glyphosate seems to be the only thing that stops this aggressive weed
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.
Goats > glyphosate
If you found a way to train them to only eat the weeds I think you’d be onto something
They definitely taste better.
Roundup has saved far more lives than it may have cut short, if any.
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.
? There are organic fertilizers, and natural methods of pest control.
Sure they cost more than modern chemicals. If you get sick from the modern chemicals, the costs incurred from treatment might be higher than the organic premium.
https://www.organicvalley.coop/blog/organic-farming-from-the...
https://www.arbico-organics.com/category/aphid-control-preve...