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A day after landmark ruling from the US Supreme Court stripped consumers of a key pathway for suing pesticide companies, legal experts said while the decision is a blow for people who blame injuries on pesticide exposure, it’s not a knock-out punch.

Even as Bayer and other pesticide makers celebrated the ruling in the case of Monsanto v. Durnell, plaintiffs’ lawyers, state and federal lawmakers and public health advocates were vowing to keep fighting for what they describe as corporate accountability for dangerous products.

On the one hand, lawsuits can and will continue alleging Bayer’s glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup cause cancer, just as will cases alleging Syngenta’s paraquat weed killers cause Parkinson’s disease, many lawyers said.

At the same time, legislators from both parties said they would introduce measures to reverse the impact of the Supreme Court decision. And consumer advocacy and watchdog groups said they would be ramping up pressure on regulators to be more diligent in overseeing pesticide products.

“The war is far from over,” said George Kimbrell, legal director and co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, which has sued the EPA over pesticide assessments. The court decision, he said, is a “galvanizing call to continued action.”

The US supreme court has found in favor of the former Monsanto company in a ruling that is expected to block thousands of lawsuits filed by people alleging the key ingredient in the weed killer Roundup causes cancer.

The decision was made in a 7-2 vote, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh offering the majority opinion and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The case, Monsanto v Durnell, specifically dealt with the question of whether a federal law that gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory authority over pesticides preempts state claims that a company failed to warn users of certain product risks when the EPA itself has not required such warnings.

“Fifra expressly preempts Durnell’s state-law failure-to-warn claim,” reads the opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh, pointing to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (Fifra).

Katherine Levy remembers a childhood deeply rooted in the natural offerings of Lake Tahoe – water-skiing in the summer and working as ski instructor on the surrounding snow-covered mountains during winter months.

After many years away, she recently moved back to live along the lake’s north shore. But she doesn’t like what she has found upon her return: a US government plan to spray multiple types of herbicides, including the cancer-linked glyphosate weedkiller – within national forest property that abuts the community’s cherished lake.

“I was horrified to find out what has been going on,” Levy said.

Levy is among a number of Lake Tahoe-area residents and officials who are fighting to block or alter the US Forest Service project, which is aimed at restoration of areas damaged by the 2021 Caldor fire.

A federal judge has rejected efforts to slow the progress of a $7.25 billion class action settlement in the nationwide Roundup cancer litigation, notching a win for Roundup maker Bayer but frustrating a group of plaintiffs’ attorneys who claim the deal is unfair to cancer patients.

The order handed down Wednesday from the US  District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, sends the settlement back to the Circuit Court for the City of St. Louis, where it had been progressing quickly toward final approval before being abruptly removed from St. Louis to the federal court by the objecting attorneys last month.

US District Judge Edward Autrey said the case was improperly moved to federal court and thus must be sent back to St. Louis.

The order support efforts by Bayer, the German owner of the former Monsanto Co., to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits brought by people who claim they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) from exposure to Monsanto’s Roundup and other glyphosate herbicides. Bayer has been mired in costly litigation since buying Monsanto in 2018, and has paid out billions of dollars in settlements and jury awards.

A new study of pesticide exposure in Peru finds a mechanistic association between exposure and cancer, and shows how “complex pesticide mixtures” can contribute to the development of cancer in people, even at exposure levels currently deemed safe.

The authors of the study, published in Nature Health, said the findings call into question classical toxicological approaches that are based on the evaluation of isolated substances and the setting of safety thresholds, and demonstrate the importance of looking at the impacts of multiple pesticide mixtures.

US and European regulators should take urgent action to more tightly regulate glyphosate, the world’s most widely used weed killer, in light of strong scientific evidence that the pesticide can cause cancer and other health problems, a group of international scientists said on Friday.

The scientists, who gathered at a “glyphosate symposium” in Seattle March 25 – 26 to examine a range of research conducted over the last decade, determined that evidence showing glyphosate herbicides can harm human health “is now so strong that no additional delays in regulation of glyphosate can be justified.”

The group affirmed prior findings linking exposure to non-Hodgkin lymphoma and warned that harmful health impacts are being found at levels of exposure consistent with current use patterns.

A new analysis links high use of the weed killer glyphosate to elevated rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), particularly in the Midwest, reinforcing years of research linking cancer to the weed killer made popular by Monsanto.

The analysis by Food & Water Watch (FWW), a nonprofit public health advocacy group, looked at counties that spray the highest amounts of glyphosate herbicides in the country, focusing on those in the top 20% of glyphosate use on commodity crops.

Top US regulators met with Bayer’s CEO last year to discuss “litigation” issues – including “Supreme Court Action” over its glyphosate weed killer – just months before the Trump administration took a series of steps to boost Bayer’s case at the high court, internal government records show.

The June 17 meeting, between officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Bayer CEO Bill Anderson and two other top Bayer executives, came as Germany-based Bayer was working to quash costly US litigation brought by tens of thousands of people who allege they developed cancer from their use of the company’s glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup.

 At the core of those lawsuits are claims that the company failed to warn users of the risk of cancer, as shown in several research studies over many years.

ayer’s proposed $7.25 billion class action settlement of Roundup litigation received preliminary approval from a Missouri court on Wednesday, rejecting opposition from a group of lawyers representing roughly 20,000 plaintiffs who claim they developed cancer from using the company’s herbicide products.

The decision from Missouri Circuit Court Judge Timothy Boyer allows for the start of a nationwide program to notify people about the class action settlement plan. Bayer, which bought Roundup maker in 2018, must deposit $500 million into a settlement fund within 10 days as part of the plan.

Syngenta, maker of a controversial pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease, said on Tuesday that it would stop making its paraquat weed killer by the end of June.

The announcement comes as the company is facing several thousand lawsuits brought by people in the US who allege they developed Parkinson’s disease due to their exposure to Syngenta’s paraquat products.