Next Stop, SCOTUS?: Preemption Holding Creates Circuit Split Over Pesticide Labeling

The recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Schaffner v. Monsanto Corp., No. 22-3075, 2024 WL 3820973 (3d Cir. Aug. 16, 2024), creates a clear circuit split on an important question of express preemption under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). An ideologically diverse Third Circuit panel unanimously held that federal law preempts claims that Monsanto is liable under Pennsylvania law for failing to give a cancer warning on its glyphosate-based weed killer, Roundup, because the EPA had registered and approved the product's label under FIFRA without requiring such a warning. Such claims, the Third Circuit held, were expressly preempted by FIFRA's "Uniformity" provision, 7 U.S.C. § 136v(b).