EPA Avoids Court Order on Organophosphates, but Timeline Concerns Remain
The Ninth Circuit has declined to force EPA to act on a petition brought by nonprofits targeting organophosphate pesticides, calling the request “premature” despite noting concerns with the agency’s response timeline for certain pesticides.
The 2021 petition, brought by environmental and farmworker groups, asks EPA to revoke Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) food tolerances and cancel Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) registrations for organophosphate pesticides due to health harms.
In a memo issued April 27, 2026, the court generally accepted EPA’s plan to address the disputed pesticides in three groups, finding the delay thus far “below the threshold of what we have generally found to be unreasonable.”
Under EPA’s proposed schedule, the agency plans to respond to the first group of pesticides in 2026. For the second group, EPA plans to address the FFDCA issues in 2026 and the FIFRA issues during registration review. EPA plans to address the third group entirely in conjunction with registration review.
Still, the court expressed concern about “the lack of a concrete timeline” for resolving some of the petitioners’ FIFRA claims, particularly those involving pesticides that may present higher risks.
“EPA admits that it will not complete its registration review for any of the thirteen pesticides by the October 2026 statutory deadline,” the memo states. “If, by the expiration of that statutory deadline, EPA still ‘does not offer a timetable’ for resolving the FIFRA-related claims for those particular pesticides presenting higher levels of risk,” the outcome may be different, the court said.
“If EPA chooses not to address the chemicals posing the greatest risk by the 2026 deadline, Petitioners are free to file a second mandamus petition as to those chemicals,” the court added, using the legal term for a petition seeking to compel agency action.
Registration Review
The court was partly persuaded by the existence of the October 2026 registration review deadline itself, which Congress extended from October 2022 through the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2022, commonly known as PRIA 5.
“Congress thus judged that EPA needs more time to complete the FIFRA registration review process for the types of pesticides at issue,” the memo states. “This weighs heavily against granting relief with respect to Petitioners’ FIFRA-related claims until after the congressional deadline has passed.”
The October 2026 deadline for registration reviews applies to pesticides registered before October 1, 2007, when Congress formally required EPA to review each registered pesticide at least once every fifteen years to ensure that it can still be used without unreasonable adverse effect on human health or the environment.
Human Health Concerns
The 2021 petition argues that organophosphate pesticides can cause a range of unreasonable adverse effects, including neurodevelopmental harm in children at exposures “far below” EPA’s current regulatory endpoint. According to the petition, those harms include impaired motor and mental development, reduced IQ, attention disorders, and autism associated with low-level exposure.
These alleged harms were not sufficient for the court to force EPA’s hand, however.
“The breadth of [Petitioners’] request was perhaps reasonable in 2021 in light of what the EPA characterizes as its earlier conservative assumption ‘that all the [organophosphates] cause similar neurodevelopmental effects.’” But “all parties now seem to agree that the degree of risk does not appear to be consistent for all thirteen pesticides still at issue.”
For example, the petitioners conceded that the pesticides chlorethoxyfos, tribufos, and terbufos are lower priority at oral argument, while emphasizing greater risk associated with bensulide, the court said. “On this record, we cannot hold that human risks justify granting the petition as to all thirteen pesticides.”
The case is In re Pesticide Action Network North America, No. 25-3955 (9th Cir.), petition for a writ of mandamus filed 6/25/2025. The memorandum disposition is unpublished.
