A coalition of farmworker and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Seattle on January 13, 2004, challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to allow the use of two highly toxic organophosphate pesticides, azinphos-methyl (AZM) and phosmet. Organophosphate pesticides, such as these, attack the human nervous system and can even cause death. Regrettably, farmworker children who live within one quarter-mile of fields have four to five times the level of chemicals in their bodies from exposure to these types of pesticides as other individuals.

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA can only register a pesticide for use in the United States if it will not "cause unreasonable adverse effects on the environment." In making the decision to re-register AZM and phosmet, however, the EPA analyzed the estimated economic value to farmers of using the two pesticides, but failed to take in to account the human health and environmental costs of using these poisons. The EPA's analysis also used industry-generated data without subjecting it to public scrutiny and downplayed the possibility of using safe and proven alternatives to these hazardous chemicals.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn the EPA's re-registration of these toxic pesticides and force the agency to consider the real impacts to workers, their children, communities, and to the environment from using these dangerous pesticides.