---
title: "Supreme Court Caps a Divided Term With Landmark Roundup and Gun Rulings"
description: "As it closed its 2025–26 term, the Supreme Court shielded the maker of Roundup from cancer-warning lawsuits and struck down a Hawaii gun-carry restriction — two decisions that underscored how firmly the court's conservative majority is steering American law, even as the alignments behind them defied easy left-right labels."
category: "U.S."
category_url: https://herald.la/category/us
author: "Arman Petrosyan"
published: 2026-06-29T09:48:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-29T09:48:00.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/supreme-court-caps-a-divided-term-with-landmark-roundup-and-gun-rulings
tags: ["Supreme Court", "SCOTUS", "Roundup", "Monsanto", "Second Amendment", "gun rights", "Hawaii"]
---
# Supreme Court Caps a Divided Term With Landmark Roundup and Gun Rulings

As it closed its 2025–26 term, the Supreme Court shielded the maker of Roundup from cancer-warning lawsuits and struck down a Hawaii gun-carry restriction — two decisions that underscored how firmly the court's conservative majority is steering American law, even as the alignments behind them defied easy left-right labels.

The Supreme Court ended its term the way it spent much of it — handing the conservative legal movement major victories, while the divisions among the justices grew sharper and, at moments, stranger.

## A shield for the maker of Roundup

In *Monsanto Co. v. Durnell*, decided June 25, the court ruled 7-2 that federal pesticide law bars state-court lawsuits accusing the company of failing to warn that its weed killer Roundup can cause cancer. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, concluded that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act — which leaves pesticide labeling to the Environmental Protection Agency — [preempts such state failure-to-warn claims](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/25/g-s1-120233/supreme-court-monsanto-roundup-decision). Because the EPA has not required a cancer warning on Roundup, the ruling means manufacturers cannot be sued in state court for omitting one.

The decision is a significant win for Bayer, Monsanto's owner, which has faced tens of thousands of claims over the herbicide's active ingredient, glyphosate, and is expected to extinguish much of that litigation.

The dissent drew notice for its makeup. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by the conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote that the majority "misunderstands FIFRA's requirements" and "leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered," [as SCOTUSblog detailed](https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-for-roundup-maker-in-dispute-over-cancer-warnings-on-pesticide-labels/). The pairing of two justices from opposite ideological wings, both objecting on textualist grounds, was a reminder that statutory cases do not always split along the court's usual lines.

## Hawaii's 'vampire rule' falls

The same day, in *Wolford v. Lopez*, the court ruled 6-3 to strike down a Hawaii law that barred carrying firearms onto private property open to the public — stores, restaurants, hotels — unless the owner gave express permission. Critics called it the "vampire rule," because gun owners effectively had to be invited in.

The majority held that the default must run the other way: firearms are permitted on such property unless the owner [affirmatively posts a prohibition](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-strikes-down-hawaii-law-requiring-permission-to-carry-guns-in-stores-and-hotels), extending the framework the court set in its 2022 decision in *New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen*. The three liberal justices dissented, as they have in the line of Second Amendment cases since *Bruen* reshaped how gun laws are judged.

## A pattern, and its limits

Across the term, the conservative supermajority that has anchored the court since 2020 generally prevailed, particularly on questions of regulatory authority and executive power. But the *Durnell* lineup — and a handful of others this term — complicated the tidy narrative of a 6-3 court voting in lockstep. On statutory interpretation, in particular, individual justices have at times broken from their wings.

What was consistent was the tenor of the disagreements. The court's liberal justices sharpened their dissents this term, objecting not only to outcomes but to the majority's methods. With the justices now departing for their summer recess, the rulings of the past week will shape litigation — over pesticides, over guns, and over the balance of power between Washington and the states — well past the close of the term.

## Sources

- [Supreme Court backs Monsanto in its fight against liability from popular weed killer](https://www.npr.org/2026/06/25/g-s1-120233/supreme-court-monsanto-roundup-decision)
- [Court rules for Roundup maker in dispute over cancer warnings on pesticide labels](https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-for-roundup-maker-in-dispute-over-cancer-warnings-on-pesticide-labels/)
- [Supreme Court strikes down Hawaii law requiring permission to carry guns in stores and hotels](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/supreme-court-strikes-down-hawaii-law-requiring-permission-to-carry-guns-in-stores-and-hotels)