National Association of Wheat Growers v. Zeise

Under California’s Proposition 65, the California governor was required to publish a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer, as determined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and other federal and international health authorities. Under Proposition 65, a person could not knowingly and intentionally expose others to any of the listed chemicals without providing a prior warning that the chemical was known to the State of California to cause cancer. Anyone who failed to comply with Proposition 65’s warning requirements could face enforcement actions and monetary penalties. In 2015, the IARC classified the herbicide glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” based on evidence that glyphosate had caused cancer in research animals. Although the EPA and nearly every other health organization besides the IARC had found no evidence that glyphosate caused cancer in humans, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) found that the IARC’s designation supported adding glyphosate to the state’s list of carcinogenic chemicals. As a result, glyphosate became subject to Proposition 65’s warning requirements. The National Association of Wheat Growers and others in the agricultural industry (collectively, the industry) (plaintiffs) brought an action against OEHHA director Lauren Zeise and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (collectively, the officials) (defendants), asserting that Proposition 65’s warning requirement as applied to glyphosate violated the First Amendment. The industry asserted that because questions existed regarding whether glyphosate was actually a carcinogen, requiring the industry to label glyphosate as a chemical “known to cause cancer” would be compelling the industry to make false, misleading, and controversial statements. The industry sought a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement of the warning requirement.