Every spring, summer, and fall, Jimmy Draeger would walk the length of his 11-acre property with a hand sprayer and a tub of Roundup. He’d mist around the flower beds, the patio, the fence line, diluting the concentrated herbicide with water as the label directed.

Nestled deep in the woods of the Missouri Ozarks, Draeger was used to seeing an explosion of weeds and shrubs in the warm months at the home he’s shared with his wife, Brenda, for more than 30 years. He didn’t think much of using Roundup to keep them at bay.

Then he was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma. According to a lawsuit filed by the Draegers in 2022, Jimmy had a chemotherapy port installed in his chest, developed neuropathy in his hands and feet, and lost control of his bowels, coordination, and sexual function. He became clinically depressed, vision-impaired, and unable to bathe without Brenda’s help.

Monsanto, the agrochemical company behind Roundup, was to blame for Jimmy’s lymphoma, the Draegers contended. In November 2023, a jury agreed. Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, was ordered to pay the Draegers and two other plaintiffs a combined $1.56 billion in damages. (A judge later cut the payout for punitive damages, reducing the total awards to $611 million.)

The Draegers’ case is one of more than 160,000 Roundup lawsuits filed against Monsanto or Bayer since 2015, when the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate, a key ingredient in Roundup, as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Most of the lawsuits hinged on failure-to-warn claims: the allegation that Monsanto, and later Bayer, failed to adequately notify customers of glyphosate’s potential cancer risk. Bayer has paid roughly $11 billion to settle these claims while denying any wrongdoing.

Now, the Environmental Protection Agency is considering a Bayer-backed rule that could significantly curtail the lawsuits.

Enter the EPA

Unlike the WHO, the EPA — which, headed by Trump appointee Lee Zeldin, has already announced massive regulatory rollbacks — does not consider glyphosate to be a likely human carcinogen.

“EPA’s cancer classification is consistent with most other international expert panels and regulatory authorities,” EPA Associate Administrator for Public Affairs Molly Vaseliou said in a statement to The Intercept. “EPA does not agree with IARC’s conclusion that glyphosate is ‘probably carcinogenic to humans.’”

Last August, 11 industry-friendly red states, led by Nebraska and Iowa, submitted a 436-page petition asking the agency to amend its labeling rules under the Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide, and Fungicide Act, or FIFRA. The proposed rule change would explicitly prohibit states from labeling pesticides and herbicides with warnings about cancer, birth defects, and reproductive harm if those notices contradict the EPA’s risk assessment.

The states made clear that their ultimate goal is to thwart future lawsuits against pesticide manufacturers. Their petition argued that recent court rulings have created a “gap in FIFRA’s regulatory framework” that the proposed rule change would plug.

“It’s telling of the lengths that pesticide manufacturers will go to make sure that nothing interferes with their profit margins.”

In January, in a move initiated by the Biden administration, the EPA took a first step of accepting public comment on the rule-making petition,........

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