Corteva Agriscience has filed a motion in the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals to halt the court’s decision to vacate the Environmental Protection Agency’s registration of the controversial herbicide dicamba, making its use illegal.

The Delaware-based company, with offices in Johnston, filed its motion in the federal appeals court in San Francisco on June 12. In its June 3 ruling, the appeals court vacated the EPA’s registration of XtendiMax and Enginia herbicides, as well as Corteva’s registration for DuPont FeXapan with VaporGrip Technology. 

In its ruling, the court wrote: “EPA refused to estimate the amount of dicamba damage, characterizing such damage as ‘potential’ and ‘alleged,’ when record evidence showed that dicamba had caused substantial and undisputed damage,” online agriculture publication DTN reported. 

In a statement posted on its website, Corteva officials said it will fight the court’s ruling because it believes dicamba is safe.

“Corteva is seeking to intervene to preserve our rights and to support the rights of customers to use the impacted dicamba weed control technologies,” the statement read. “We believe dicamba is an effective weed management tool for farmers when used according to the label.”

According to an earlier article published by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, the use of dicamba skyrocketed in recent years after Monsanto introduced genetically modified soybean and cotton seeds that resist the herbicide. As a result of the court’s decision to vacate the EPA registration of dicamba, farmers would have to immediately halt the use of the herbicide, affecting about 60 million acres of crops in the Midwest and South.

Farming and conservation organizations National Family Farm Coalition, Center for Food Safety, Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticide Action Network filed a lawsuit in 2017 claiming the EPA unlawfully approved the weedkiller.

In the lawsuit, the groups claimed the EPA violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act because it didn’t have enough evidence to make its decision, including the effect of dicamba’s drift on soybean yields, according to the article published by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

According to the article, dicamba is the focus of hundreds of lawsuits filed over the damage, including a case that resulted in a Missouri jury awarding a peach farmer $265 million for damage from the herbicide to his crops.