Dear Editor,
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent 7-2 decision in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell is a devastating blow to state sovereignty and public safety. By ruling that the federal EPA’s regulatory approval shields Monsanto from state-level lawsuits, the Court has locked the courthouse doors to citizens harmed by toxic products. This ruling is not an isolated mistake; it is the latest symptom of a long, dark history of judicial overreach.
Our nation’s history is marred by terrible Supreme Court decisions that ignored the Constitution’s true intent. The absolute worst, of course, was Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which denied humanity and citizenship to Black Americans.
Following that came the second worst: the corporate capture of the 14th Amendment. This culminated in the infamous 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, where corporate personhood wasn’t even formally argued or decided. Before oral arguments even began, Chief Justice Morrison Waite declared that the Court did not wish to hear arguments on the matter because the justices were already of the opinion that the 14th Amendment applied to corporations.
With that single, lazy utterance—slipped into the case’s unofficial summary by a former railroad executive turned court reporter—an amendment meant to protect newly freed slaves was mutated into a shield for artificial corporate “personhood”. The third worst was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which enshrined “separate but equal” segregation.
In modern times, this legacy of judicial overreach has only accelerated. The fourth and fifth worst decisions—Citizens United v. FEC (2010) and McCutcheon v. FEC (2014)—further corrupted our democracy by treating corporate money as protected “free speech,” allowing billionaires and special interests to buy our elections.
This systemic stripping of power from ordinary citizens is exactly what we see playing out today in the courthouse. Which brings us back to Monsanto. I stand firmly in the camp of Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, who warned from 1938-49 that treating corporations as “persons” was a tragic misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. Today, corporate-friendly judicial activism has left local communities defenseless against toxic products.
When the Supreme Court uses federal power to preempt state liability, it robs local communities of their sovereignty. True justice requires a return to a faithful, textual reading of the Constitution—which was written to protect flesh-and-blood citizens, not the corporate empires seeking immunity from the consequences of their actions.
George Ferdinand
Tewksbury
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