On June 21, a U.S. federal appeals court blocked the state of California from forcing Bayer to label Roundup herbicide with a cancer warning. Roundup contains the active ingredient glyphosate, which was controversially labeled as a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2015. However, an investigation by Reuters later found that key information supporting the conclusion the pesticide does not cause cancer in animals had been omitted from the report. In 2016, the EPA affirmed glyphosate does not cause cancer, and in 2017 a long-term study by the National Cancer Institute following 50,000 people over 20 years also showed no link between glyphosate and cancer.

The ruling by the court indicated that the WHO’s finding alone was insufficient to support California’s demand to label all products that contain glyphosate, not just Roundup, with the phrase “known to the state of California to cause cancer.” The ruling permanently bars California from requiring the cancer warning on all glyphosate products. It is the result of a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Bayer and more than a dozen agricultural groups against California for requiring the cancer warning on the label.

The ruling was an important victory for Bayer, which has been dealing with a multitude of lawsuits related to glyphosate and the WHO’s cancer determination. Despite the fact that all other regulators around the world have examined the scientific studies done for glyphosate and determined glyphosate to be safe, the WHO’s finding touched off a storm of litigation against Monsanto (the original registrant of Roundup) and then Bayer after Bayer purchased Monsanto in 2018. Since the WHO’s ruling, Bayer has faced thousands of lawsuits from Roundup users, and losses in three trials resulted in juries ordering Bayer to pay billions of dollars to the plaintiffs. Bayer is appealing these verdicts.