Enlist Duo’s registration has survived another legal challenge, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declined to reevaluate part of its earlier ruling upholding the herbicide’s registration.
In that first ruling in July 2020, a panel of three Ninth Circuit judges ruled in a 2-1 judgement that the herbicide, a 2,4-D-choline-glyphosate premix designed to be sprayed over top 2,4-D-tolerant Enlist crops, did not violate federal law, as a group of environmental and farmer groups had alleged in a lawsuit.
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Specifically, the plaintiffs in the Enlist Duo case — a group of environmental organizations led by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Food Safety — then filed a petition in late September asking for a larger panel of Ninth Circuit judges to rehear part of their lawsuit, known as a “petition for rehearing en banc.”
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The plaintiffs argued that the original July ruling violated the Endangered Species Act, ignored legal precedent and created “a dangerous loophole” for future pesticide registration
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On Nov. 18, the Ninth Circuit rejected those arguments …. As a result, the petition was rejected and the plaintiffs now have only one final recourse, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
