Solicitor General Sides With Bayer

Solicitor General Sides With Bayer -

On December 2, 2025 the U.S. Solicitor General (SG) filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear Bayer’s appeal in the Roundup litigation—and, crucially, backing the company’s argument for federal preemption over state-level consumer protection. This move is less about a neutral interpretation of the law and more about the federal government throwing a lifeline to a multi-billion dollar corporation facing existential liability.

This is the core of the controversy:

• The Solicitor General’s Argument: Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) purpose is to create a uniform federal labeling standard. Allowing state juries to impose billions of dollars in liability for not adding a cancer warning would undermine the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) scientific judgment that glyphosate is "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans."

The Problem: This argument treats regulatory compliance as immunity from tort liability. It effectively says that so long as a company convinces a federal agency its label is acceptable, it is shielded from the consequences of a jury finding that the product still caused harm and that the company should have warned consumers, regardless of the EPA's stance.

The Irony of the Retraction -

The timing of the SG's brief is particularly ironic, coinciding with a major scientific journal's retraction of a 25-year-old paper that Monsanto heavily relied on to claim glyphosate's safety. The retraction was due to "serious ethical concerns" regarding Monsanto's undisclosed involvement in the paper's writing.

This underscores the critical flaw in the SG's argument: the EPA's conclusion is not a divine, static truth, but a regulatory judgment often influenced by the very industry it regulates. The SG's brief seeks to protect Bayer from liability even as the scientific and ethical foundation of that conclusion continues to crumble in the public eye.

The Supreme Court has not yet granted Monsanto's petition to hear the case.