The start of a new year also means the start of a new legislative session. By late January, all but a small handful of states will have convened the 2025 legislative session and begun considering new legislation. In at least five states, bills have been introduced that continue a trend which began during the 2024 legislative session. The bills would provide that federal registration of a pesticide product by the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) would be sufficient to satisfy any requirement that the product include a warning label for possible cancer risks. Similar bills were introduced to multiple state legislatures last session. While none of those bills passed, more are expected to be introduced and possibly become law in 2025. As the legislative season gets underway, understanding the potential impacts of these bills will be of importance to the agricultural industry.

Background

Over the last decade, there has been a noted increase in the number of lawsuits filed by plaintiffs who claim that exposure to a particular pesticide product caused them to develop some sort of injury or illness. In particular, there have been thousands of lawsuits filed in the United States during the past ten years by plaintiffs who claim that exposure to the herbicide glyphosate caused them to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Most of the plaintiffs filing such cases raise the same few legal claims which the National Agricultural Law Center has examined in detail in a series called Plaintiffs & Pesticides. However, one particular legal claim has become the focus of further lawsuits and may ultimately be considered by the United States Supreme Court.

Almost every pesticide injury lawsuit filed in the past ten years has included a claim that the pesticide manufacturer failed to warn the plaintiff of the health risks associated with using their product and that such failure caused the plaintiff’s injury. These claims, known as failure to warn claims, arise out of state tort law. They are typically raised by plaintiffs to allege that a product manufacturer failed to provide adequate warnings or instructions as to the safe use of a product. To succeed on a failure to warn claim, a plaintiff must prove both that the manufacturer failed to warn consumers about a particular risk, and that the risk was either known or knowable to the manufacturer in light of the best knowledge available at the time the product was manufactured and distributed. When a plaintiff claims that Bayer, the maker of glyphosate, failed to warn them that use of glyphosate could cause them to develop cancer, that plaintiff must show that Bayer both failed to warn consumers of the cancer risk, and that Bayer knew or should have known of the risk based on the knowledge available.

While failure to warn claims have proven successful for various pesticide injury plaintiffs, defendants have argued that such claims should be dismissed because they are preempted by federal law. Preemption is a legal doctrine that refers to the idea that a “higher” form of government will displace the authority of “lower” forms of government when the two conflict. Federal law will preempt state law when the two conflict because it is a “higher” form of government. Pesticide manufacturers such as Bayer have argued that state law failure to warn claims should be categorically preempted by labeling requirements in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (“FIFRA”).

FIFRA is the primary federal law regulating pesticides in the United States. It is administered by the EPA and provides that no pesticide product may be sold in the United States until EPA approves the product’s label. FIFRA also prohibits states from adopting “any requirements for labeling or packaging in addition to or different from” those required under FIFRA. 7 U.S.C. § 136v. Glyphosate has been approved for use in the United States since the 1970s. Its federally approved label does not contain a carcinogen warning, nor has EPA ever determined that glyphosate is likely to be carcinogenic in humans.

Bayer argues that state law failure to warn claims should be categorically preempted by FIFRA because in order to avoid liability under those claims, Bayer would need to add a cancer warning to the label or packaging of any glyphosate products it sells in states where it has been sued. Doing so would likely be regarded as imposing a state law labeling requirement that is either in addition to or different from glyphosate’s federally registered label. To learn more about the arguments around whether failure to warn claims should be preempted by FIFRA, click here.

As of early 2025, three federal circuit courts have considered the question of preemption and failure to warn claims in pesticide injury lawsuits. Two courts, the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits, have found that the claims are not preempted. More recently, the Third Circuit has ruled that the claims are preempted. The split between the circuits has increased the possibility that the United States Supreme Court could agree to hear the issue. While the question of preemption in pesticide injury lawsuits continues to work its way through the court system, some state legislatures have begun to consider how to address the matter through legislation. Last year, various state legislatures considered bills that would have limited liability for pesticide manufacturers facing failure to warn claims. States are already starting to consider similar legislature during the 2025 session. While none of the bills introduced in 2024 became law, it is possible that one or more states could enact a pesticide liability limitation bill in 2025.

Pesticide Liability Limitation Bills

In 2024, the following states considered a pesticide liability limitation bill: Florida, Idaho, Iowa, and Missouri. While there were slight differences between the proposals, all were intended to provide a defense from civil liability for pesticide products that had federally registered labels.

Some of the earliest states to introduce pesticide liability limitations bills in 2024 were Iowa and Idaho. Both contained nearly identical language, and provided that:

for any pesticide registered with [EPA] under [FIFRA], the label approved by [EPA] in registering the pesticide, or a label consistent with the most recent human health assessment performed under [FIFRA], or a label consistent with the [EPA’s] carcinogenicity classification for the pesticide under [FIFRA] shall be sufficient to satisfy any requirements for a warning regarding health or safety under […] state law, including without limitation the duty to warn, or any other common law duty to warn.

In other words, both the Iowa and Idaho bills would have considered a federally registered pesticide label, a federally registered label consistent with EPA’s most recent human health analysis for the pesticide product, or a federally registered label consistent with EPA’s most recent carcinogenicity classification for the pesticide product sufficient to satisfy any state law requirements for health and safety warnings. The Iowa bill explicitly stated that it “provides for a defense from civil liability associated with the use of pesticides that are glistered with [EPA] acting under [FIFRA].”

The 2024 Missouri bill was slightly more limited. It would have considered either a federally approved label, or a federally approved label consistent with EPA’s most recent carcinogenicity classification to be sufficient to satisfy any state requirement for a cancer warning. This is narrower than either the Iowa or Idaho proposals which would have found a federally registered label to be sufficient to satisfy any health and safety warning.

Of the 2024 proposals, the Florida bill was the most unique. While the other proposals all had largely similar language, the Florida proposal was structured differently. It provided that “[a] products liability action, including a failure to warn, may not be brought or maintained against any distributor, dealer, or applicator” except for in four specific instances. Those instances included:

• the distributor, dealer, or applicator exercised substantial control over the aspect of the design, testing, manufacture, or labeling of the pesticide product;
• the distributor, dealer, or applicator altered or modified the product, and that modification was a substantial factor in causing the alleged harm;
• the distributor, dealer, or applicator handled, used, or applied the product in a manner inconsistent with the product label and that such action caused the alleged harm; or
• the manufacturer or the pesticide product is not subject to Florida’s jurisdiction.

Unlike the other pesticide liability limitation bills proposed in 2024, the Florida 2024 bill specifically limited liability for those who distributed, sold, or applied pesticide products instead of pesticide manufacturers. Additionally, the Florida 2024 bill would have limited liability for any “products liability action, including failure to warn,” not just failure to warn itself.

While the 2025 session for most states has only just begun, a few have already introduced pesticide liability limitation bills, and more are expected to follow. As of the date this article is published, lawmakers in at least Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wyoming have introduced new pesticide liability limitation legislation. Missouri’s 2025 bill, HB 544, is identical to the bill proposed in 2024. Oklahoma’s bill, HB 1755, is also identical to the bills introduced in 2024. However, the bills introduced in Florida, Mississippi, and Wyoming differ.

Florida’s 2025 bill, HB 129, contains the same language regarding distributors, dealers, and applicators as the 2024 bill, but adds language that would limit liability for pesticide manufacturers. Specifically, HB 129 provides that:

a products liability action […] based on a failure to warn may not be brought or maintained against a manufacturer for any pesticide registered with [EPA] if the label is: (1) approved by [EPA]; (2) consistent with the most recent human health assessment performed under FIFRA; or (3) consistent with [EPA’s] carcinogenicity classification of the pesticide under FIFRA.

Like the pesticide liability limitation bills introduced in Iowa and Idaho last year, HB 129 would consider a federally approved pesticide label to be a defense against any failure to warn claim.

The bill introduced in Mississippi, HB 1221, provides that any “manufacturer or seller of a pesticide” registered under FIFRA and approved for use in Mississippi “shall not be liable in civil action related to the labeling of the pesticide, including a product liability action alleging failure to warn, if the pesticide bore a label approved by the EPA under FIFRA at the time of sale.” Should HB 1221 become law, plaintiffs in Mississippi would not be able to bring any civil action against a federally registered pesticide, specifically including any claims for failure to warn. Like the 2024 Florida pesticide liability limitation bill, the HB 1221 is broader in scope than the bills that seek to limit only failure to warn claims.

Finally, the Wyoming bill, HB 0285, states that “the duty of a manufacturer or seller of a pesticide to warn a consumer or the public about the risks associated with the pesticide shall be presumed to be satisfied if the pesticide bears the label approved by [EPA] under [FIFRA.]” In other words, instead of prohibiting plaintiffs in Wyoming from raising failure to warn claims to challenge pesticide products, HB 0285 would make a federally registered pesticide label a defense to any failure to warn claim. Importantly, HB 0285 also provides that the defense of a federally registered pesticide label could be overcome by “a showing that the weight of scientific evidence does not support the scientific basis on which the required warning is premised and that the manufacturer or seller knew or should have known at the time the pesticide was sold that the required warning was not supported by the weight of scientific evidence.” To date, HB 0285 is the only pesticide liability bill introduced in either 2025 or 2024 that would allow the failure to warn claims to proceed if the plaintiff demonstrates that the federally registered label is not based on sound scientific evidence.

Going Forward

As the 2025 legislative session progresses, it is likely that more states will consider pesticide liability limitation bills in the same vein as HB 544, HB 129, and the various bills introduced last year. Should these bills become law, it would mean that plaintiffs in those states would likely be unable to successfully raise failure to warn claims against pesticide manufacturers for harm allegedly caused by federally approved pesticide products. While other legal claims would remain available to those plaintiffs, failure to warn claims have come to be regarded as some of the strongest claims pesticide injury plaintiffs are able to make. Plaintiffs in states with a pesticide liability limitation bill would likely face a more challenging litigation landscape than in states without such a bill. However, the exact impacts will be unclear until such a bill becomes law.

To read the text of FIFRA, click here.

For more National Agricultural Law Center resources on pesticides, click here.