Roundup lawsuit update

Verified snapshot

The facts that anchor this dossier

Roundup litigation sits at the intersection of a still-active federal MDL, separate state-court trials, product-specific claims, and genuine disagreement among scientific and regulatory reviews.

Federal proceeding

MDL 2741

Coordinated in the Northern District of California before Judge Vince Chhabria.

Pending actions

3,932

JPML count as of August 3, 2026, against 5,322 historical federal MDL actions. State-court cases fall outside this count.

Alleged injury

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Federal plaintiffs generally allege glyphosate-based Roundup exposure caused NHL; Monsanto disputes causation and liability.

Regulatory status

EPA registration review remains open

EPA withdrew the 2020 interim decision after litigation and is updating its analysis before a final registration-review decision.

Scientific assessments

Not uniform

IARC classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic; EPA says its longstanding view is “not likely” to be carcinogenic, and epidemiologic studies report differing results.

Documented chronology

How the litigation reached this point

Where the Roundup cases actually sit

MDL 2741 coordinates federal cases alleging that exposure to glyphosate-based Roundup products caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto failed to warn adequately. It has produced extensive expert rulings, bellwether trials, and case-specific proceedings. It holds a portion of the Roundup lawsuits. State courts manage their own cases, trials, and appeals, and a state verdict leaves the JPML's federal pending count unchanged.

That split is why monthly “Roundup lawsuit totals” conflict with each other. The current JPML report lists 3,932 actions pending in the federal MDL against 5,322 historical actions. Those are federal docket statistics. They count filed federal cases, not exposed people or unresolved claims nationwide. Subtracting pending from historical also produces a number of closed actions, not a number of settlements: cases leave a docket for several procedural reasons.

What the Hardeman bellwether established

Edwin Hardeman's case was the first federal bellwether. The trial was phased. Court instructions state that the jury first determined Roundup was a substantial factor in causing his NHL, then considered whether Monsanto was legally responsible under design-defect, warning and negligence theories and what damages were appropriate. That verdict was a consequential test of the evidence presented in one case.

Its reach stops at that record. Use history, formulation, latency, governing law, and admissible experts all differ between plaintiffs, so later federal and state cases can reach opposite outcomes without contradiction. Bellwethers inform negotiations and strategy. Neither a courtwide payout schedule nor a presumption of causation follows from one.

Why IARC and EPA reached different conclusions

IARC's 2015 working group classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans, Group 2A, after evaluating hazard evidence. EPA's regulatory review uses a different legal framework that considers risk under labeled conditions of use. EPA says its longstanding scientific conclusion is that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans, while also explaining that the 2020 interim registration decision was vacated in part and withdrawn and that an updated analysis is underway.

The two bodies answered different questions. Hazard identification asks whether an agent can cause cancer under some circumstances. Risk assessment weighs exposure and conditions of use. The agencies also apply different methods to the same evidence. Reporting the disagreement accurately means describing both frameworks, rather than implying that one institution quietly reversed the other or that a regulatory label resolves a plaintiff's medical causation.

What the human studies show

The large Agricultural Health Study update published in 2018 followed licensed pesticide applicators and found no association between glyphosate and solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies overall, including NHL. A separate 2019 meta-analysis, using the highest exposure groups across the AHS and five case-control studies, reported an increased relative risk of NHL. More recent pooled work has reported subtype-specific signals while emphasizing uncertainty and the influence of exposure measurement and study design.

This is the setting where “a study says” fails as a summary. Cohort and case-control designs have different strengths, and recall, co-exposures, and the definition of the highest exposure group all move the estimate. Relative risk describes a population. It is not the probability that glyphosate caused one person's cancer, which needs a confirmed diagnosis, a defensible exposure history, and consideration of alternative risk factors.

How to verify a Roundup settlement claim

Monsanto has publicly discussed resolving significant inventories of Roundup claims. Company announcements and MDL case counts describe activity; a universal open claims program would have to come from an agreement. Settlement agreements can cover defined inventories represented by particular counsel and can carry confidential eligibility, scoring, and release terms, while other cases remain in litigation or proceed in state court.

Useful records include purchase or employment evidence, application logs, photographs of product containers, and oncology records establishing the timeline between use and diagnosis. Medical care should continue on its own terms regardless of litigation content. Web forms promising a fixed award from a diagnosis alone go beyond anything in the record: no public federal order reviewed through July 10, 2026 supports that promise.

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