WASHINGTON — Members of the House dealt Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and biomedical company, a setback after they voted to remove language from a bill that would have shielded pesticide and herbicide makers from legal liability.
The Republican authors of the House’s farm bill had included language to keep states from passing their own pesticide regulations and insulate companies like Bayer from lawsuits.
“If this language is not removed, we will have handed companies like Bayer exactly what they have spent millions of dollars and lobbying power on: legal immunity,” Chellie Pingree, a House Democrat, said during debate about the bill.
By a vote last week of 280-142, the House adopted an amendment to the overall farm bill that stripped out the sections to protect Bayer and other companies whose products are used to kill insects and plants. A Florida Republican, Anna Paulina Luna, wrote the amendment. Every New Jersey lawmaker except Rep. Tom Kean (R-7th), who has been absent from Congress with an undisclosed health concern, voted for it.
“Congress has turned their backs on U.S. farmers in an increasingly competitive global landscape by allowing blatant misinformation to undermine support for this critical provision,” Nicole Hayes, a spokeswoman for Bayer, said in a statement. “The removal of this language could result in a patchwork of regulations creating ambiguity – at a time where clarity is needed most.”
The bill must pass the Senate before it can be signed into law.
For years, Bayer has lobbied federal agencies and Congress to adopt policies and pass laws to make it more difficult for plaintiffs to bring legal claims against the company. Bayer’s U.S. headquarters are in New Jersey, with offices in Whippany and Morristown.
Bayer in 2018 purchased Monsanto, the U.S. maker of the weedkiller Roundup, a widely used herbicide linked to cancer in humans. Through the acquisition, Bayer inherited tens of thousands of lawsuits filed by farmers, agricultural workers and others exposed to glyphosate, the active Roundup ingredient.
Monsanto developed Roundup in the 1970s. Though the Environmental Protection Agency considers the product to be safe, researchers at the World Health Organization in 2015 determined glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The chemical has been mostly phased out in most residential products, though it remains available to professionals.
President Donald Trump in February signed an executive order to raise the domestic volume of glyphosate.
Bayer donated $1 million to the presidential inauguration of Trump and Vice President JD Vance, lobbying disclosure records show.
Bayer spent $9.19 million on lobbying expenses in 2025, a 9% increase from the year prior, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan watchdog group. The company lobbied this Congress on drafts of the farm bill, pesticide labeling, trade, crop protection and glyphosate liability, among other topics, lobbying records show.
Bayer has repeatedly supported attaching language to appropriations bills to provide legal protection against lawsuits, including by making its case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
A favorable ruling from the court, which heard oral arguments in late April, could insulate Bayer from paying billions of dollars in legal settlements. The Justice Department argued on the side of Bayer, which has pressed its case that federal pesticide law supersedes that of the states.
The company argued that legal challenges lack merit because a federal statute — the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — overrides state rules for pesticide labels. Company lawyers pointed to the section of the law that says states “shall not impose or continue in effect any requirements for labeling or packaging in addition to or different from those required” under federal law.
“Companies should not be punished under state law for complying with federal label requirements,” Hayes said. “A favorable ruling by the Supreme Court would provide essential regulatory clarity for companies who seek to bring currently approved and new products to market, addressing their ability to serve U.S. farmers and consumers.”
In February, Bayer reached a settlement worth $7.25 billion to end lawsuits with plaintiffs who had argued that Roundup causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) filed a brief in the Supreme Court case, arguing that the states have the “power to enforce their own regulations on pesticide use as part of a deliberate legislative judgment intended to better ensure public safety.
