Tell Your U.S. Senators to Protect Your Right to Sue Pesticide Corporations

While we’ve been battling legislation that would give pesticide companies immunity from accountability when their toxins cause harm – sponsored by corrupt politicians at both the state and federal levels – Senator Cory Booker has sponsored a federal bill that would do the opposite. The bill, S.2324, the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act, would ensure that pesticide manufacturers can be held responsible for the harm caused by their toxic products. Specifically, this bill would amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act of 1972 (FIFRA) to create a federal right of action for anyone who is harmed by a toxic pesticide.

If these largely foreign-owned pesticide companies are successful in their quest for immunity, their liability shield would leave farmers, farmworkers, and other injured individuals without meaningful recourse for the harms caused by these toxic substances.

Chemical companies are seeking liability shields because they know how harmful their products are. Syngenta, a subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned company ChemChina, reached a $187.5 million settlement in 2021 for paraquat-related Parkinson’s disease claims. Syngenta has nearly 6,000 additional Parkinson’s disease lawsuits filed against it. Monsanto, now owned by Germany’s Bayer, has paid billions of dollars to settle lawsuits linking Roundup (glyphosate) to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Bayer has faced over 170,000 cancer lawsuits – approximately 66,000 have not been settled and there will be more.

There is no time to lose. Pesticide companies are lobbying hard to pass standalone immunity bills at the state level. The governors of North Carolina and Georgia have already signed immunity bills into law, stripping NC and GA residents of their rights. And Kentucky’s state legislature passed an immunity bill, and voted to override Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s veto of that bill.

S.2324 would assure that people in these states, and all states across the nation, would still be able to sue pesticide corporations in federal court.

Sign the petition to your U.S. Senators to urge them to protect our constitutional rights and co-sponsor and pass S.2324, the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act.