#scotusiscompromised — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #scotusiscompromised, aggregated by home.social.
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#SupremeCourt Rejects Lawsuit Alleging #Roundup #Weedkiller Caused #Cancer
The court’s decision is likely to determine the future of thousands of lawsuits against #Bayer, which manufactures the weedkiller, over similar claims.
By Abbie VanSickle
June 25, 2026, 10:50 a.m. ET"The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with the manufacturer of the weedkiller Roundup, overturning a jury award for a Missouri man who claimed the widely used herbicide caused cancer in a decision that could have sweeping impacts on thousands of other Americans who similarly claim the product sickened them.
In the 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the majority found that a federal law that regulates pesticides barred the Missouri man’s lawsuit.
Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the Missouri case would “require a cancer warning on Roundup’s label,” which would directly conflict with the label required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Because of this conflict, he wrote, federal law “expressly pre-empts” the Missouri man’s claim.
The dispute focused on a single case, a $1.25 million award for John Durnell, a gardener in St. Louis who had used Roundup for decades and claimed that years of exposure to the product led him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. Mr. Durnell claimed that the company had failed to warn consumers of the dangers of the product.
The ramifications of the decision could be enormous, potentially jeopardizing thousands of lawsuits pending in state and federal courts against Bayer, the German company that acquired Roundup’s original maker, #Monsanto, in 2018.
The legal question before the justices focused on a narrow slice of the broader litigation: whether Bayer can be sued in state-level courts given that a federal agency decided not to issue a warning label for the weedkiller.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which is in charge of labeling pesticides throughout the country, has determined Roundup is safe. Bayer claims that the finding, which allows Roundup to be sold without a warning label, should override claims by Mr. Durnell and others that under state laws, they were injured by the product.
The Trump administration joined the case on Bayer’s side, reversing the position taken by the Biden administration. The Trump administration’s support for the Roundup manufacturer has been controversial among the Make America Healthy Again movement, whose activists had largely supported the president’s political rise.
Government lawyers asserted that once the E.P.A. determined Roundup was safe, Bayer was in fact required to abide by the agency’s decision in its product labeling.
If the company had tried to unilaterally change the product’s label, they argued, it would have violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.
Roundup, which was created by Monsanto in the 1970s, is one of the most popular weedkillers in the world. But concerns over one of its active ingredients — a chemical called #glyphosate that is absorbed by plants, traveling into their roots and blocking an enzyme used for their growth — have prompted one of the biggest waves of class-action lawsuits in U.S. history.
Evidence in lab animals, along with more limited evidence in humans, has shown a link between glyphosate and cancer, and a 2015 report by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it as “probably #carcinogenic to humans.”
The E.P.A. has studied the chemical and determined a cancer warning was not necessary. In February 2020, the agency announced findings that “there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label” and that the chemical was “unlikely” to cause cancer in humans.
After a court challenge, the #EPA withdrew those findings and the chemical’s safety currently remains under formal review.
In his lawsuit, Mr. Durnell said the company should be liable for failing to warn users about the risks of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma from exposure to glyphosate.
In 2023, a jury in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, a state court, sided with Mr. Durnell. The company appealed the case, which eventually landed at the Supreme Court."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/us/politics/supreme-court-weedkiller-roundup-bayer.html
#USPol #EPAFail #SCOTUSIsCompromised #ImpeachClarenceThomas #ImpeachSamuelAlito #SCOTUS #RoundupKills
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"#Ethics experts said #ClarenceThomas’ undisclosed ties to the #Koch network could call his impartiality in the case into doubt. This sort of potential conflict is why the judiciary has rules against both political activity and fundraising, they said. 'Parties litigating in the court before #JusticeThomas don’t know the extent of Thomas’ relationship with the parties on the other side,' said James Sample, a Hofstra University law professor who studies judicial ethics. 'You have to be pretty cynical to not think that’s a problem.' "
#OligarchCamp
#BohemianGrove
#SCOTUS
#ImpeachClarenceThomas
#ChevronDoctrine
#NDRC
#KochIndustries
#Oligarchy
#CorruptSCOTUS
#SCOTUSIsCompromised
#Corporatocracy
#Oiligarchy
#EnvironmentalProtections
#BigOilAndGas
#CorporatePolluters
#HeritageFoundation
#ClimateDeniers
#WaterIsLife
#AirIsLife -
#ClarenceThomas Secretly Participated in #KochBrothers Network Donor Events
by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski
Sept. 22, 2023, 5 a.m. EDTExcerpt: "Thomas has attended at least two Koch donor summits, putting him in the extraordinary position of having helped a political network that has brought multiple cases before the Supreme Court.
" 'In the 15 years since, the Koch network has left a deep imprint on American society. Its advocacy is credited with helping stamp out Republican Party support for combating #ClimateChange, once an issue that drew bipartisan concern. The “full weight of the network” was thrown behind passing the 2017 #TrumpTaxCut, securing a windfall for the Kochs and their donors. And the upcoming Supreme Court term could bring the network a victory it has pursued for years: overturning a major legal precedent known as #Chevron.
"While most Americans aren’t familiar with the 1984 case Chevron v. #NRDC, it’s one of the Supreme Court’s most-cited decisions. Legal scholars sometimes mention it in the same breath as Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. In essence, Chevron is about government agencies’ ability to issue regulations. After a law is enacted, it’s generally up to agencies across the government to make detailed rules putting it into effect. The Chevron decision said courts should be hesitant to second-guess the agencies’ determinations. In the years that followed, judges cited Chevron in upholding rules that protect endangered species, speed up the approval process for new cellphone towers and grant benefits to coal miners suffering from black lung.
"The Koch network has challenged Chevron in the courts and its lobbyists have pushed Congress to pass a law nullifying the decision. It has also provided millions of dollars in grants to law professors making the case to overturn it.
"The network’s position has become increasingly popular in recent years. Once broadly supported by academics and judges on the right, Chevron is now anathema to many in the conservative legal movement. And there’s no more prominent convert than Thomas.
"In 2005, Thomas wrote the majority opinion in a case that expanded Chevron’s protections for government agencies. Ten years later, he was openly questioning the doctrine. Then in 2020, Thomas renounced his own earlier decision, writing that he’d determined the doctrine is unconstitutional after all — a rare reversal for a justice with a reputation for being unmovable in his views.
"By last year, Koch network strategists sensed that victory could be at hand. During an internal briefing for network staff, Jorge Lima, a senior vice president at Americans for Prosperity, said the Supreme Court seemed primed to radically change its approach to the issue. The network was trying to find cases that could bring about major changes in the law, according to a video of the meeting obtained by the watchdog group Documented. “We’re doubling down on this strategy,” Lima told the crowd.
"Several months later, the Supreme Court announced it would take up a case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which Koch network staff attorneys represent the plaintiffs. If Thomas and his colleagues side with them this coming term, Chevron will be overturned once and for all."
#OligarchCamp #BohemianGrove #SCOTUS #ImpeachClarenceThomas #Chevron #ChevronDoctrine #NDRC #KochIndustries #Oligarchy #CorruptSCOTUS #SCOTUSIsCompromised #Corporatocracy #Oiligarchy #EnvironmentalProtections #BigOilAndGas #CorporatePolluters #HeritageFoundation #ClimateDeniers #WaterIsLife #AirIsLife
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#WTF! #CorruptSCOTUS HAS GOT TO GO!!
#USAirForce avoids #PFAS water cleanup, citing #SupremeCourt’s #Chevron ruling
#EPA says Tucson’s drinking water is contaminated but air force claims agency lacks authority to order cleanup
by Tom Perkins
Mon 12 Aug 2024"The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the 'Chevron doctrine'. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS '#ForeverChemicals' and other dangerous compounds.
"Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air force’s claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the military’s claim that it would represents an early indication of how #polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/air-force-epa-water-pfas-tucson
#ImpeachJusticeThomas #ChevronDoctrine #SCOTUSIsCompromised
#ImpeachJusticeAlito #TuscanArizona #WaterIsLife #PFASPollution