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

3,920

JPML count as of July 1, 2026; 5,308 historical federal MDL actions. State-court cases are 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

The federal MDL is only one part of the Roundup story

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. But it does not contain every Roundup lawsuit. State courts manage their own cases, trials and appeals, so a state verdict does not change the JPML's federal pending count.

This split is why monthly “Roundup lawsuit totals” often conflict. The July 2026 JPML report lists 3,920 actions pending in the federal MDL and 5,308 historical actions. Those are federal docket statistics, not the number of exposed people, approved claims or unresolved cases nationwide. Historical minus pending also cannot be labeled “settled”: cases leave a docket for multiple 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.

It was not a scientific rule binding every later jury. Individual use history, formulation, duration, latency, diagnosis, other risk factors, governing law and admissible experts can differ. Later federal and state cases can produce different outcomes without logical contradiction because they are decided on different records. Bellwethers inform negotiations and strategy; they do not create a courtwide payout schedule or automatic presumption of causation.

Why IARC and EPA sound different

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.

These are not interchangeable questions. Hazard asks whether an agent can cause cancer under some circumstances; risk assessment considers exposure and conditions of use. The agencies also weigh bodies of evidence under different methods. A careful litigation page should report the disagreement accurately, not imply that one institution secretly reversed the other or that a regulatory label settles a plaintiff's individual medical causation.

What 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 a classic setting where “a study says” is not enough. Cohort and case-control designs have different strengths; recall, co-exposures, latency choices and definitions of the highest exposure group affect results. Relative risk is a population measure, not the probability that glyphosate caused one person's cancer. Individual analysis still needs a confirmed diagnosis, a defensible product and exposure history, timing and consideration of alternative risk factors.

Settlement claims require document-level verification

Monsanto has publicly discussed resolving significant inventories of Roundup claims, but neither company announcements nor an MDL case count create a universal open claims program. Settlement agreements can cover defined inventories represented by particular counsel and can contain confidential eligibility, scoring, release and payment terms. Other cases may remain in litigation or proceed in state court.

Useful records include purchase or employment evidence, application logs, photographs of product containers, property and crop history, protective-equipment practices, oncology and pathology records, and the timeline between use and diagnosis. People should not stop medical care or alter treatment because of litigation content. They should also avoid web forms that promise a fixed award from a diagnosis alone; no public federal order reviewed through July 10, 2026 supports that promise.

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