They couldn't win in court. So they went to abolish the court.
Juries kept siding with cancer patients who blamed Roundup, and the verdicts ran into the billions. Bayer's answer wasn't to win the science — it was to pass state laws stripping those patients of the right to sue at all. This is regulatory capture you can watch happen in real time: the Powell Memo's playbook, running through statehouses in 2025.
We grade this carefully. The lawsuits, the settlements, the lobbying group, and the enacted shield laws are all documented fact. Whether glyphosate actually causes cancer is a genuine scientific dispute — and we do not resolve it here. The story isn't the chemistry. It's the quiet abolition of the courtroom as a remedy.
What this page is about
Starting in 2018, juries handed down enormous verdicts against Monsanto — later Bayer — for plaintiffs who said the weedkiller Roundup gave them non-Hodgkin lymphoma. After losing its first three trials, Bayer agreed in June 2020 to pay up to $10.9 billion to resolve roughly 100,000 claims, and set aside billions more the next year. The litigation didn't stop.
So the company changed the board. Bayer founded a lobbying vehicle, the Modern Ag Alliance, and began pushing “pesticide-liability-shield” bills in statehouses. The bills say that if a pesticide's label matches what the EPA requires, the manufacturer can't be sued for failing to warn about a health risk — and because the EPA does not classify glyphosate as a carcinogen, the shield effectively ends the failure-to-warn suits. In 2025 North Dakota, Georgia, and Kentucky became the first states to enact one. This page grades the campaign.
The record, claim by claim
Bayer paid up to $10.9 billion to settle roughly 100,000 Roundup cancer claims.
FACTAfter losing its first three trials — including a May 2019 California jury award of over $2 billion in a single case — Bayer announced in June 2020 it would pay up to $10.9 billion to resolve current and potential Roundup litigation, covering around 100,000 of the roughly 125,000 claims then filed. In 2021 it set aside an additional $4.5 billion. The litigation has continued into 2026. This is the pressure the shield laws are designed to relieve.
Bayer founded the 'Modern Ag Alliance' and backed liability-shield bills in ~14 states.
FACTAfter similar legislation failed in 2024, Bayer organized the Modern Ag Alliance and, in the 2025–26 sessions, backed pesticide-liability-shield bills in roughly 14 states, with active bills in states including Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wyoming. The Alliance reported spending over $300,000 on Facebook ads in 2025 alone promoting glyphosate safety and the immunity push.
North Dakota, Georgia, and Kentucky enacted the first shield laws in 2025.
FACTNorth Dakota (HB 1318) became the first state to sign a pesticide-immunity law in 2025; Georgia (SB 144) followed weeks later; Kentucky became the third. Each limits a plaintiff's ability to bring a failure-to-warn claim against a pesticide maker whose label conforms to EPA requirements.
The shield works by leaning on the EPA's label — and the EPA does not call glyphosate a carcinogen.
FACTThe mechanism is the whole game. The bills provide that a label consistent with EPA requirements satisfies any duty to warn — so a plaintiff can't argue the company should have added a cancer warning. Because the EPA's registration does not classify glyphosate as a carcinogen (and rarely mandates cancer warnings), the shield converts the EPA's regulatory posture into a near-total litigation defense. A federal version was pushed via Farm Bill language to nationalize the effect.
Whether glyphosate actually causes cancer is contested — and we don't resolve it.
SOME SMOKEGraded SOME SMOKE and left there deliberately. The World Health Organization's cancer agency (IARC) classified glyphosate as 'probably carcinogenic to humans' in 2015; the US EPA maintains it is 'not likely' carcinogenic at label doses; other regulators have split. Juries have credited the plaintiffs; the science is genuinely disputed. We take no position on the chemistry. The point of this page holds regardless of who is right about the cancer question: a contested health risk is exactly the situation in which the right to make your case to a jury matters most — and that is the right being removed.
- IARC Monograph Vol. 112 (2015) — glyphosate 'probably carcinogenic'; US EPA glyphosate assessment ('not likely')
The mechanism is certain; the chemistry is not
- The remedy, not the toxicology. We assert what's on the record: the suits, the settlements, the lobbying group, the enacted laws, the EPA-label mechanism. We do not assert that Roundup gives people cancer — that stays SOME SMOKE. Both things can be true: the science can be unresolved and stripping the right to sue over it can be the scandal.
- Not all tort reform is this. There are honest arguments for federal uniformity in pesticide labeling. What makes this a capture story is the sequence: lose in front of juries, then rewrite the law — through model bills a single company is bankrolling — so the juries never rule again.
- This is the Powell Memo, dated 2025. The 1971 Powell Memo told business to organize and fund a long campaign to reshape the rules; ALEC industrialized the model bill. The pesticide shields are that playbook's living example — which is exactly why this piece anchors the war on the rules leg of the hub.
When the courtroom is the last regulator
Product-liability suits are not just about money; they are the backstop that operates when agencies are captured or asleep. A jury can force disclosure, set a price on harm, and change corporate behavior even when regulators won't. Remove that backstop and the EPA's judgment becomes the only word on a product's safety — the same EPA whose posture this hub documents being hollowed out and overruled in 2025–26. That is why a state-by-state fight over a few paragraphs of legislative text belongs in a hub about deregulation: it is the moment the last remedy is quietly closed.
Questions worth taking seriously
Aren't you just assuming Roundup causes cancer?
No — we grade that question SOME SMOKE and explicitly don't resolve it. IARC says “probably carcinogenic”; the EPA says “not likely.” The page's argument doesn't depend on who is right: when a health risk is genuinely disputed, that is precisely when the right to bring your case to a jury matters most — and that is the right the shield laws remove.
Isn't federal uniformity in labeling a reasonable goal?
It can be a legitimate argument in the abstract. What turns it into a capture story is the sequence and the sponsor: a single company that just lost billions in front of juries is funding model bills that would stop juries from ruling on its product. Reasonable- sounding means, deployed to a self-interested end, by the party with the most to gain.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Investigate Midwest — Pesticide politics: inside the corporate push to limit liability
- PIRG — States consider bills that would protect pesticide companies from lawsuits
- Wisner Baum — Pesticide immunity bill could strip away legal rights
- NPR — Bayer to pay more than $10 billion to resolve Roundup cancer lawsuits (2020)
- Food & Water Watch — Groups sue Trump EPA over Iowa waters delisted despite nitrate impairment
- IARC Monograph Vol. 112 (2015) — glyphosate “probably carcinogenic to humans”; US EPA glyphosate registration review (“not likely”)