The Supreme Court decided several interesting cases today, with resulting controversy. In Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, the Court took up the case of a plaintiff who sued Monsanto under Missouri tort law, claiming that his exposure to glyphosate, which Monsanto markets under the brand name Roundup, gave him cancer. A Missouri jury found in Durnell’s favor and awarded him damages.
Glyphosate is the most widely used agricultural chemical in the world. Its safety has been evaluated many times, and it does not cause cancer. But it is not rare for a jury to be led astray and to find in favor of a sympathetic plaintiff, bolstered by expert testimony.
The issue in this case, though, was whether Monsanto failed to warn of Roundup’s cancer risk on its EPA-approved label. Monsanto’s position was that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempted Durnell’s state law claim. Under FIFRA, the EPA approves agricultural chemical labels, and states are not permitted to require contradictory warnings or instructions. I have long thought that FIFRA preemption was a well-established fact, and was surprised to see that in the last few years, a few courts have held to the contrary.
Today’s Court sided with Monsanto, holding that FIFRA preemption applies and bars Durnell’s state law failure to warn claim. The vote was 7-2, with strange bedfellows Ketanji Jackson and Neil Gorsuch dissenting. (It is a historical coincidence that Gorsuch’s mother once ran the EPA.)
Federal preemption is a technical issue requiring close statutory analysis. But that isn’t how Politico treated the case:
Oh, is that what the case was about? The Court convened, and the justices were asked whether they liked “big business” or those with “cancer,” and seven of the nine chose “big business”? Or was it about FIFRA’s preemption clause? The press’s coverage of the law is a disaster. https://t.co/40OlyH6pc3
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 25, 2026
Our press is a bad joke–or worse, a disgrace.
The Court also decided two immigration cases, both in the Trump administration’s favor. In Mullin v. Doe, the Court reversed a lower court order than enjoined the Trump administration from terminating the Temporary Protected Status of aliens from Haiti and Syria. (“Temporary,” of course, persists for decades.) The lower court held that the Trump administration didn’t follow the proper procedures, but the Supreme Court held, 6-3, that the TPS law bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims.
The three dissenters were, of course, Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson. They argued with the majority’s reading (plainly correct, I think) of the applicable law, and claimed that the administration’s action, as to Haiti, was racially discriminatory. The majority rejected that assertion:
None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications. For example, one may oppose TPS and favor tighter restrictions on immigration for economic or other reasons that have nothing to do with race. And a person without racial bias can provide a harshly unfavorable description of living conditions in some of the countries with TPS designations. The criteria for TPS designations guarantee that many, if not most, designated countries have such characteristics.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court held, again 6-3, that an alien on Mexican territory has not “arrive[d] in the United States” for purposes of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. The significance of this is that it upholds the “metering” of immigrants at the Southern border, so that a certain number will be processed each day. Those who have not yet been processed have not “arrived.” Metering was adopted during the last days of the Obama administration, was continued throughout the Trump administration, and was discontinued during the Biden administration.
One of the questions in the case was whether the issue was moot. Why? Because, given the drastic reduction in border crossings under the second Trump administration, metering is not currently necessary and is not being used.
The usual triumvirate dissented, and Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion. When the Court announced its opinions, Sotomayor took the unusual step of reading her dissent aloud, to the great annoyance of Justice Alito, who wrote the majority opinion:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor took the rare step of reading her dissent from the bench, adding extemporaneously that her colleagues’ ruling “regrettably and tragically extinguishes the light of the torch of the Statue of Liberty.”
Bizarre and totally inappropriate editorializing.
“The consequences of today’s decision are predictable,” Sotomayor wrote. “More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More people will be forced to walk along the U.S.-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves … Because this is neither what Congress said nor what its words permit, I respectfully dissent.”
It is not clear to me why people will die, since metering is not currently going on. Anyone who appears at the border is processed. So why will more people attempt to cross the border illegally? In any event, it was a sad spectacle.
