The Supreme Court on June 27 rejected a pair of agriculture-related petitions, including Bayer AG’s last remaining cases filed with the court on Roundup and a challenge levied against the Beef Checkoff program by Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA).
A week before the ruling, the Supreme Court denied Bayer AG’s petition on Monsanto v. Hardeman. Then, the court rejected the company’s petition on the product liability verdict in Pilliod v. Monsanto. In both cases, the cancer victims won multimillion-dollar jury awards.
“Bayer respectfully disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision, but the company is not surprised given the court’s declination in Hardeman just one week ago,” Bayer said in a statement to DTN.
“There are likely to be future cases, including Roundup cases, that present the U.S. Supreme Court with preemption questions like Pilliod and Hardeman and could also create a circuit split and potentially change the legal environment. The solicitor general’s brief in Hardeman referenced the Carson case, which is currently before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and involves a favorable ruling by the trial court that the personal injury claims were preempted by federal law.”
The new ruling comes after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California on June 17 rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) analysis for determining that glyphosate is likely not carcinogenic and ordered EPA to reevaluate its conclusions.
Bayer told DTN it continues to stand “fully behind” its Roundup products. “The company is confident that the extensive body of science and consistently favorable views of leading regulatory bodies worldwide, including most recently by the European Chemicals Agency’s Committee for Risk Assessment, provide a strong foundation on which it can successfully defend Roundup in court when necessary. The company will only consider resolving outstanding current cases and claims if it is strategically advantageous to do so.”
Beef Checkoff
Also on June 27, the Supreme Court denied R-CALF USA’s December 2021 petition that challenged the implementation of the federal Beef Checkoff program.
The group had asked the court to consider whether otherwise “unconstitutional-compelled subsidies of private speech” are considered “government speech” free from First Amendment review.
On May 2, 2016, R-CALF USA sued USDA, alleging the federal Beef Checkoff program amounts to a “government-compelled subsidy of private speech of a private entity” and arguing it was unconstitutional. A preliminary injunction was granted by the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana.
USDA then entered into memoranda of understanding with 20 state beef councils in Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin.
R-CALF USA has argued in court that in entering the agreements, “USDA denied R-CALF USA’s members—and ranchers everywhere—their right to weigh in on a federal program they are forced to fund.”
In a statement in response to the ruling, R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard said, “Our objective in this case was to bring an end to the corrupt manner in which the Beef Checkoff program was being operated. Specifically, we set out to stop the U.S. Department of Agriculture from unconstitutionally compelling U.S. cattle producers to fund the private speech of private state beef councils.
“We largely succeeded in that effort early in our case. In response to our lawsuit, the USDA took steps to assume necessary control over the speech of the state beef councils identified in our case to limit their ability to express private messages with the money that cattle producers are mandated to pay into the program.” — Todd Neeley, DTN staff reporter
