Breaking Barriers to Justice
as ever. In June 2021, the movement suffered a blow with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid. The Court found that a regulation made pursuant to the 1975 California Agricultural Labor Relations Act that required agricultural employers to allow labor organizers to access their property for the purposes of union recruitment constituted a per se taking under the Fifth Amendment. Labor organizers have used the regulation to access agricultural worksites less frequently over the years due to the ability to reach workers through smartphones or radio. However, there is now an estimated 170,000 indigenous Mexican farmworkers in California. This growing segment of the workforce speaks 20 distinct languages, and many are not fluent in Spanish. These workers lack access to information on workplace safety training and legal rights, necessitating in-person contact by organizers who speak indigenous languages. Further, many migrant workers live in labor camps owned by the employer and are transported to and from their worksites, making reaching these workers extremely difficult now that on-site access is no longer guaranteed. This year, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in Monsanto v. Durnell , which involved a collision between state and federal power. The case is an appeal of a successful failure-to-warn state trial on behalf of Missouri gardener John Durnell who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after long-term use of the weedkiller Roundup. Bayer AG, the German conglomerate that acquired Monsanto in 2018, argued that under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA),
state law cannot impose labeling requirements that are in addition or different from federal requirements. Importantly, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approval of labels is often based on limited information early in a product’s life, before the science around a pesticide’s harms has developed. For decades, Monsanto and regulators relied on an academic article to dispute claims that glyphosate was carcinogenic to humans—an article that was formally retracted in December 2025 due to serious ethical concerns related to Monsanto’s undisclosed involvement in the article’s drafting. Attorneys from the Trump administration joined the case in support of Bayer. On the day of oral argument, scores of members of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement protested in front of the Court. On June 25, 2026, the Court released its opinion, holding that when the EPA has exercised its authority under FIFRA to approve a pesticide label, any state law seeking to impose a different labeling requirement is preempted. This decision is a blow to consumers’ ability to hold manufacturers accountable for their dangerous products and is expected to reshape the litigation landscape for thousands of pending state lawsuits. Before the Durnell decision, Bayer had been aggressively lobbying for pesticide immunity legislation in DC and the state capitols of red and blue states. On the day of the ruling, the American Association for Justice (AAJ) issued a statement calling on Congress to restore the rights of people who have limited paths for justice and accountability.
America’s Semiquincentennial
This July marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the
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Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM July/August 2026
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