Supreme
Court upholds Oregon’s physician-assisted
suicide law, rejects Bush Administration stand
(Compiled from wire stories)
The U.S.
Supreme Court Tuesday upheld Oregon’s one-of-a-kind
physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush
administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally
ill patients die.
While
the vote might not have been a surprise, the lopsided
majority almost certainly was. The justices voted 6-3 that
the 1997 Oregon law which was cited in ending the lives of
more than 200 seriously ill people trumped federal authority
to regulate doctors. But new Chief Justice John Roberts
showed where his loyalties lie, backing the Bush
Administration, dissenting with the majority for the first
time.
The
court held that the administration exceeded its authority
when it tried to use a federal drug law to prosecute Oregon
doctors who prescribed overdoses to patients who chose to
end their lives.
The
then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said in 2001 that
doctor-assisted suicide is not a “legitimate medical
purpose.”
In their
opinions, Justic Anthony Kennedy, who wrote for the majority
of soon-to-be-outgoing Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and
Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader
Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer noted that “Congress did not
have this far-reaching intent to alter the federal-state
balance,”
In a
ruling that would come as no surprise to Missouri voters or
people who opposed Ashcroft as attorney general, Kennedy
said the “authority claimed by the attorney general is both
beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory
purposes and design.”
Ashcroft, had said that doctor-assisted suicide is not a
“legitimate medical purpose” and that Oregon physicians
would be punished for helping people die under the law.
The
ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, which said Ashcroft’s “unilateral attempt to
regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to
state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about
physician-assisted suicide.”
Ashcroft
brought the case before the Supreme Court on the day his
resignation was announced by the White House in 2004. .
Chief Justic Roberts
and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented.
Scalia,
writing the dissent, said that federal officials have the
power to regulate the doling out of medicine.
“If the
term ‘legitimate medical purpose’ has any meaning, it surely
excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death,” he
wrote.
Scalia
said the court’s ruling “is perhaps driven by a feeling that
the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal
government’s business. It is easy to sympathize with that
position.”
Oregon’s
law covers only extremely sick people — those with incurable
diseases, whom at least two doctors agree have six months or
less to live and are of sound mind.
Thomas
wrote his own dissent as well, complaining that the court’s
reasoning was puzzling. Roberts did not write separately.
Reaction
from sidelines
The court’s ruling was not a final say on federal authority
to override state doctor-assisted suicide laws — only a
declaration that the current federal scheme did not permit
that. However, it could still have ramifications outside of
Oregon.
“This is
a disappointing decision that is likely to result in a
troubling movement by states to pass their own
assisted-suicide laws,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of
the American Center for Law and Justice, which backed the
administration.
According to press reports, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a
supporter of the law, said the ruling “has stopped, for now,
the administration’s attempts to wrest control of decisions
rightfully left to the states and individuals.”
Background
to the issue
Justices have dealt with end-of-life cases before. In 1990,
the Supreme Court ruled that terminally ill people may
refuse treatment that would otherwise keep them alive. Then,
justices in 1997 unanimously ruled that people have no
constitutional right to die, upholding state bans on
physician-assisted suicide. That opinion, by then-Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist, said individual states could
decide to allow the practice.
Roberts
strongly hinted in October when the case was argued that he
would back the administration. O’Connor had seemed ready to
support Oregon’s law, but her vote would not have counted if
the ruling was handed down after she left the court.
Supreme
Court upholds Oregon’s physician-assisted