07/05/2026
We must all be paying attention. This doesn't just impact us as farmers, it impacts us all, our children and our grandchildren, so I share it.
We are so grateful to live in an area that is surrounded by like minded farmers. But how many generations will that last. Join with us by using your dollars to purchase local, organic as much as you can. True Story below of what just happened in our courts:
A farmer got cancer, sued Monsanto, and won $1.25 million. Monsanto appealed. The farmer won again. So Monsanto took it to the Supreme Court and argued it should be immune from being held responsible at all. This week, the Court agreed.
The legal hook was a federal pesticide law called FIFRA. The Court found that FIFRA supersedes statesā rights, even though, as Cianci pointed out, āthere is no, no direct language in FIFRA that gives it the right to supersede statesā rights.ā
Then she got to who was sitting on the bench. According to Cianci, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Elena Kagan have both previously worked on cases for Bayer Monsanto, and neither recused themselves. The attorney arguing for the company, Sarah Harris, was Thomasās former clerk.
And Harrisās rĆ©sumĆ© gets stranger. Cianci described how Harris left her roughly $2 million Bayer Monsanto salary for just four months last year to work for the federal government, long enough to write the brief the United States would submit in support of the company, and then returned to the firm representing Bayer Monsanto.
āThis was the most incestuous ruling Iāve seen come out of the Supreme Court in a very, very, very long time,ā Cianci said. āWithout those two attorneys, it would have been a different outcome.ā
The practical result: no state can now tell its citizens they have the right to sue when a carcinogenic chemical ends up on their crops, in their food, or in their water.
The ruling canāt be appealed. But Congress can override it in a single sentence, and that fight starts in the next two weeks.