Monsanto (a division of Bayer Global) makes Roundup weed killer. Over the past few years, their bigwig attorneys have doled out campaign money and favors to win over Idaho politicians so they could get a liability-immunity (for harm allegedly caused by the Roundup herbicide) bill in Idaho. Idaho Freedom Foundation stopped them at every turn (it was a horribly negative bill).
Still, you can see how dozens of influential legislators were bought and paid for nonetheless; just look at the Bayer contributions (type “Bayer” in the contributor name field) in candidate campaign financing accounts and PACs back to 2024. Notice the two huge contributions to the Idaho Rising PAC ($50,000) and Idaho Prosperity Fund ($10,000).
Bayer even sent three of their high-priced attorneys (from Germany, San Francisco, and Texas) to our IFF offices in 2024 to try to convince us to change our bill rating so it would pass. They asked how they could change the bill to make it more palatable. The only way to edit the bill away from the negative rating was to eliminate the liability-immunity, which was a “no-go” for them because that was the point of the legislation. The rating remained negative, and the bill died. Then they tried a softer bill, but it perished in a committee chair’s drawer.
Losing in Idaho, Bayer went elsewhere — to Missouri — to get their corporate protectionism by appealing directly to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) in a Roundup liability case (Monsanto v. Durnell) involving a Missouri farmer. In an appalling decision, the court voted 7-2 to keep Monsanto harmless from lawsuits by those affected by the glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup. (SCOTUSblog.com)
The case in question was corporate giant Monsanto against the little guy, John Durnell, a Missouri neighborhood groundskeeper. Durnell developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after years of using Roundup around his neighborhood, sued, won, with a Missouri jury awarding him $1.25 million in damages. Then SCOTUS overturned that award in what detractors call the “People versus Poison” decision in June.
Idaho Freedom Foundation opposes liability-immunity legislation and similar corporation-protecting court decisions. During COVID, IFF saw the harms caused by liability-immune protected pharmaceutical companies pushing untested vaccinations onto an unwitting public. Similarly, we fought hard to keep Bayer and Monsanto from being able to harm Idahoans without bearing any responsibility for Roundup's negative health consequences. We condemn the Supreme Court’s decision which has the same effect as the bill we killed. Now people will be hurt, and sadly, they will have no recourse for damages. Shame.
