Doctor-assisted suicide gains ground
Supreme Court rejects bid to block Ore. law
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court yesterday struck down the Bush administration's attempt to block an Oregon law permitting doctors to help terminally ill patients die, paving the way for other states to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
By a 6-to-3 vote, the court ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft exceeded his authority in November 2001 when he announced that doctors who prescribed lethal drugs under the Oregon law would lose their prescription-writing privileges and could be prosecuted.
Ashcroft declared he had the power to override the Oregon law under the federal Controlled Substances Act, saying that helping patients end their lives is not a legitimate medical purpose for a prescription. But the court said the federal act is aimed only at preventing recreational drug use.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the Bush administration had sought to give ''a single executive officer the power to effect a radical shift of authority from the states to the federal government" in seeking to block assisted suicide.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, arguing that Ashcroft's interpretation of his powers as attorney general was owed ''substantial deference" by the court. Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined Scalia's opinion.
The court left open the possibility that Congress could pass a law banning the use of narcotics to help people end their lives. The court held in 1997 that the Constitution does not include the right to die, leaving the issue to the political branches of government to decide.
Advocates of the right-to-die movement hailed yesterday's decision as a turning point in their push for physician-assisted suicide, saying the ruling lifted a legal cloud that has hung over their efforts elsewhere in the country. State lawmakers in Vermont, California, and Hawaii have introduced legislation to replicate the Oregon law, but the bills have stalled.
''This is a watershed decision for freedom and democracy in the US," said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices, an advocacy group. ''It reaffirms the liberty, dignity, and privacy Americans cherish at the end of life. No government should threaten these rights nor usurp a state's power to meet the needs of its dying citizens."
But advocates of the right-to-life movement -- which is better known for opposing abortion rights, but also condemns physician-assisted suicide -- denounced the ruling.
''This sets a dangerous precedent for all vulnerable Americans, especially those with disabilities and life- or health-threatening illnesses," said Dorothy Timbs of the National Right to Life Committee. ''Drugs should be used to cure and relieve pain, never to kill."
The dispute dates to 1997, when Oregon became the first state to allow doctors to help patients with terminal illnesses commit suicide.
Under Oregon's ''Death With Dignity Act," which was twice approved by voters, two doctors must certify that patients who want to end their lives are mentally competent and have less than six months to live. A doctor then writes a prescription for a lethal dose of drugs, which the patients administer themselves.
The Oregon law aroused passionate opposition among religious conservatives. The Clinton administration decided that nothing in federal law blocked Oregon from allowing physician-assisted suicide. In response, some Republicans in Congress -- including Ashcroft, who was then a senator from Missouri -- tried to amend the Controlled Substances Act to restrict the prescribing of drugs for suicide, but failed.
But after he became attorney general, Ashcroft announced that he was reinterpreting the Controlled Substances Act to criminalize physician-assisted suicide, threatening Oregon doctors with prosecution if they prescribed life-ending drugs. Oregon immediately sued, and a federal district court blocked Ashcroft's directive from taking effect.
Between 1997 and 2004, 208 Oregonians with terminal illnesses used the law to end their lives. The state has not yet finished compiling numbers for 2005, said Oregon's solicitor general, Mary Williams.
''We're very pleased with the opinion," Williams said. ''It does leave open the question of whether Congress would have the power to override our law directly, so that may be a battle we face another day. But for now, this should be the end of the challenges we'll face to the Oregon law."
The Bush administration expressed frustration with the ruling.
''We are disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision today," said Tasia Scolinos, Justice spokeswoman. ''The Department of Justice remains committed to enforcing our nation's laws and ensuring that drugs are not diverted to unlawful uses."
Kennedy was joined in his majority opinion by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, and John Paul Stevens.
The case presented the first test of Roberts's views on executive power, a major issue at his confirmation hearing in September.
Deference to executive power also had a high profile last week at the confirmation hearing for Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., whom Bush has nominated to replace O'Connor.
Kennedy peppered his 28-page majority opinion with withering language about the administration's broad view of its power to reinterpret federal drug laws to criminalize a medical procedure with which it disagreed.
Such ''unrestrained" and ''extraordinary power," Kennedy wrote, would go ''well beyond" what the attorney general has the authority to do under law. He called the administration's actions ''difficult to defend."
Marc Spindelman, an Ohio State University law professor, said Kennedy's ''series of large and small slaps against an executive branch official" sent the message that there are ''limits to what an executive branch official can do."
''The court is clearly going out of its way to issue a series of reprimands to executive branch officials . . . for failing to recognize their place in the constitutional order," he said. ''To execute the law is not to make the law. These aggressive readings of the statute, in the court's opinion, were making law -- law that only Congress had the authority to make and didn't in fact make." 