Legislative proposals, and a new law in North Dakota, seek changes on when pesticide makers can be held liable for ‘failure to warn’

December 4, 2025

#glyphosate Agriculture production Failure to warn FIFRA Pesticides

In April 2025, North Dakota became the first state to limit pesticide liability lawsuits in cases where a manufacturer complies with federal law and labeling standards.

Under the new law (HB 1318), a federally approved label now fulfills any “duty to warn” requirements regarding the safety of a pesticide.

Will more states follow?

Similar bills were introduced over the past year in 10 other U.S. states, with one becoming law: Georgia’s SB 144.

Iowa was the only other Midwestern state to consider such a measure; SF 394 passed the Senate in March 2025 but stalled in the House. Iowa Sen. Tom Shipley supported the change in his state, saying the current legal framework puts pesticide manufacturers between a “rock and a hard place.”

Even if they follow the letter of the law and have a product label approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Shipley says, these manufacturers can still be sued under states’ product liability laws. The consequence for farmers, he adds, is potentially losing access to herbicides, insecticides and other key inputs if manufacturers phase them out due to soaring liability costs.

Lawsuits over glyphosate

This recent push for pesticide liability legislation stems largely from litigation over Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide.

According to an August 2025 Reuters news article, Bayer has paid more than $10 billion to settle cases involving its glyphosate product and has set aside $1.37 billion more to address some 61,000 remaining U.S. cases.

The success of these lawsuits is based on a common component of state liability laws known as the “duty to warn”: If manufacturers do not provide adequate, timely or reasonable warnings about known or foreseeable risks associated with the use of their products, they can be held liable for damages.

But should pesticide manufacturers be shielded from such claims if they have complied with EPA registration procedures and received an EPA-approved pesticide label — such as in the case with Roundup?

Yes, say the backers of North Dakota’s HB 1318 and Iowa’s SF 394.

Conversely, plaintiffs in the Roundup cases allege that the pesticide manufacturer breached its duty to warn users that glyphosate may be carcinogenic.

The success of litigants is based largely upon a 2015 International Agency for Research on Cancer study, which classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

The EPA, however, has not reached any such conclusions. It conducted an interim registration review of glyphosate in 2020 and issued a decision that read in part: “There are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label … [and] glyphosate is unlikely to be a human carcinogen.”

Two years later, though, the EPA withdrew this interim decision after a federal court found “serious errors” in the agency’s assessment of human-health risks. Glyphosate-based herbicides remain available as the EPA collects further data in advance of a final decision (expected in 2026).

Pesticide use and regulation

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, approximately 473,000 tons of pesticides was used for U.S. agricultural purposes in 2023.

Without pesticides, estimated crop losses would reduce production by 50 percent for wheat, 60 percent for soybeans and 68 percent for corn, according to an oft-cited 2005 study by the Institute for Plant Diseases.

The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) requires the registration of all pesticides sold or distributed in the United States.

As part of this registration process, the EPA conducts a scientific, legal and administrative review, evaluating the product’s ingredients, proposed uses, application rates and disposal methods. Manufacturers must submit data to regulators showing that the product, when used as directed, poses no unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.

The EPA re-reviews each pesticide on the market at least once every 15 years. Also under the law, product labeling must be approved by the EPA.

Room for state policy

Though pesticide oversight and regulation rest primarily with the federal government, states can play a role as well. For example, they have the authority to limit where and how EPA-approved pesticides are used.

Federal law is more restrictive on state-based labeling. A statutory provision in FIFRA says states cannot have labeling or packaging requirements “in addition to or different from” those imposed by the EPA.

However, a California law requires manufacturers to provide a warning label for any chemicals known to cause cancer. This led the state to propose a carcinogen warning for glyphosate. This action was blocked in 2023 by a federal court based on First Amendment challenges and the lack of scientific consensus on the health effects of glyphosate.

One year later, attorneys general in Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and six other states petitioned the EPA to create uniform labeling requirements and preempt state labeling of FIFRA-regulated products. This petition remains under EPA review.

Meanwhile, the Modern Ag Alliance, a coalition of producer associations and agricultural manufacturers, has been leading efforts to limit pesticide liability lawsuits through state legislation, including the new law in North Dakota.

The alliance’s executive director, Elizabeth Burns Thompson, notes that manufacturers cannot simply add precautionary disclaimers to labels in order to avoid lawsuits.

“Scientific justification [for] every piece of that label is required,” she notes, “or [the EPA] will not approve it.” Further, if manufacturers include information that the federal agency does not agree with, the product is “misbranded” and cannot be sold.

Debate over North Dakota’s HB 1318

North Dakota Sen. Jonathan Sickler says compelling cases were made by both sides during legislative debate over HB 1318.

Preventing lawsuits, when there is clear compliance with federal law and labeling standards, provides certainty to pesticide manufacturers and ensures growers’ access to products.

On the other hand, Sickler says, agricultural producers and industry workers face the greatest exposure risk, and some of them expressed an understandable desire to retain a potential cause of action.

He ultimately voted against HB 1318 for at least two reasons.

First, he said, a “blanket statutory solution” may not offer the necessary flexibility. “Judges and juries and court systems are in a position to take into account what the parties knew at the time when they were offering the product,” says Sickler, a Harvard-trained lawyer.

Second, the law takes away a “duty to warn” claim based on the actions of a federal agency. He was not comfortable with such a deferral to the EPA.