Chamath Palihapitiya

You're on a shot clock, and you only have, and it's 30 minutes aside, and then the justices will ask questions.

So this was Monsanto and Roundup, right?

So what was the law that was being debated?

For years, the regulatory body, the EPA, sets the label for pesticides.

Does this cause cancer or not?

What are the warnings?

This can be damaging for birth defects, pregnancy, all the things that we're all used to seeing on labels when you buy a product, a chemical product.

And the EPA and their regulatory authority determined that Roundup does not cause cancer.

When you sell a pesticide, you first have to register it with the EPA, get it approved, and then the EPA gives you a label.

And the label is written by the EPA.

It says exactly what you're supposed to say.

And in this case, it said all this stuff doesn't say cancer because they determined it does not cause cancer.

And I'm not going to debate whether or not it causes cancer, but that's the case that was made is that the EPA is the regulatory body under a federal act called FIFRA, Fungicide, Insecticide, or Denticide Act.

And that's where the EPA is given the regulatory authority to put the label on these products.

And all of the cases that have been lost have been state failure to warn cases.

To date, Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, has paid out $10 billion in these lawsuits, and they have reserved $10 billion on their balance sheet, and they have 90,000 cases still outstanding in the courts.

90,000.

And so this one case got kind of appealed up to the Supreme Court.

Last year, the White House solicitor general, and if the solicitor general steps up and asks the Supreme Court to take a case, it's more likely the case gets taken.

So the White House said, please take this case.