JUSTICES UPHOLD OREGON ASSISTED-SUICIDE LAW

In a Blow to Administration, Ruling Paves Way for Other States to
Follow Suit

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's law on physician-assisted suicide
yesterday, ruling that the Justice Department may not punish doctors
who help terminally ill patients end their lives.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Attorney General John D.
Ashcroft exceeded his legal authority in 2001 when he threatened to
prohibit doctors from prescribing federally controlled drugs if they
authorized lethal doses of the medications under the Oregon Death With
Dignity Act.

The ruling struck down one of the administration's signature policies
regarding what President Bush calls the "culture of life" and lifts
the last legal cloud over the state's law, which is unique in the
nation. It also frees other states to follow in Oregon's footsteps,
unless Congress acts to the contrary.

It is unclear how many states would join Oregon; assisted-suicide
initiatives have not fared well in recent years. Still, coming a year
after efforts by Republicans in Congress to block the removal of a
feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, and after Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr. and Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. faced
questions from the Senate about their views on end-of-life issues, the
court's decision could energize the political debate. Roberts
dissented from the ruling, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas.

Conservatives reacted angrily to the ruling. Jay Sekulow, chief
counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit
litigation group founded by Pat Robertson, called it "a disturbing and
dangerous decision that can only lessen the value of protecting human
life."

But Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) called it "a significant victory for
Oregon's voters," who twice approved the Death With Dignity Act in
statewide referendums. Looking ahead to possible Republican efforts to
change federal law, Wyden said, "I will fight tooth and nail any
congressional attempts to overturn this court ruling."

A Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll released Jan.
5 found that 46 percent of Americans support a right to assisted
suicide while 45 percent oppose it. Assisting suicide is a crime in 44
states, including Maryland, as well as the District. It is a civil
offense in Virginia. In three states -- North Carolina, Utah and
Wyoming -- the law neither prohibits nor permits assisted suicide.
Ohio's Supreme Court has decriminalized assisted suicide, but state
regulations do not condone it.

State referendums supporting assisted suicide have failed in
California, Maine, Michigan and Washington. A bill failed in Maryland
in 1995 and 1996. A measure modeled on Oregon's passed two committees
in the California Assembly last year but then fizzled from lack of
support. An author of the bill, Assemblywoman Patty Berg (D), said she
was "very optimistic" that the ruling would help prospects for the
bill this year.

The Supreme Court was aware of the strong feelings on both sides --
and portrayed itself as above them.

Although frequently described as a "right to die" case, Gonzales v.
Oregon , No. 04-623, was not, strictly speaking, about the
constitutional right to end one's own life. The court has already
ruled, in 1997, that there is no such right and did not revisit that
holding yesterday.

Instead, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy noted in the majority opinion that
the question was whether Ashcroft acted in accordance with the
Controlled Substances Act when he issued an "interpretive rule" in
2001, declaring that assisting suicide is not a "legitimate medical
purpose" for which federally regulated drugs may lawfully be
prescribed. Ashcroft's successor, Alberto R. Gonzales, has continued
the policy.

Kennedy acknowledged that the case was partly a product of the
national debate over end-of-life issues but noted that the "resolution
requires an inquiry familiar to the courts: interpreting a federal
statute to determine whether Executive action is authorized by, or
otherwise consistent with, the enactment."

The answer, Kennedy wrote, is no: Recasting the issue as involving the
states' right to regulate medical practice rather than a patient's
right to die, he concluded that Ashcroft had made an overly broad
interpretation of the 35-year-old federal Controlled Substances Act
(CSA). Kennedy wrote that the law was meant to stop drug abuse and
drug trafficking, not to replace the states' traditional role in
deciding what state-licensed doctors may and may not do within state
borders.

"The Government, in the end, maintains that the prescription
requirement [of the CSA] delegates to a single Executive officer the
power to effect a radical shift of authority from the states to the
Federal Government to define general standards of medical practice in
every locality," Kennedy wrote. "The text and structure of the CSA
show that Congress did not have this far-reaching intent to alter the
federal-state balance and the congressional role in maintaining it."

Kennedy was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor,
David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

In dissent, Scalia argued that Ashcroft had acted well within his
legal powers. "If the term legitimate medical purpose has any meaning,
it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," Scalia
wrote.

He was joined by Roberts -- dissenting for the first time on the court
- -- and Thomas. Thomas wrote separately to argue that the court's
ruling was inconsistent with its opinion last year upholding a federal
override of a California law legalizing the medical use of marijuana.

The Oregon Death With Dignity Act was adopted by the state's voters in
1994. It permits doctors to prescribe, but not administer, a lethal
dose to a terminally ill patient who requests it, provided that the
patient is mentally competent.

State voters rejected a challenge to the law in 1997; two efforts to
override it in Congress, supported by Ashcroft when he was a senator,
failed. President Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno,
declined to act against the law.

From 1997 to 2004, 208 people ended their lives by physician-assisted
suicide in Oregon.

After Ashcroft issued his declaration as attorney general, a federal
district court in Oregon upheld the law, as did the San
Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The Bush
administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed last year
to take the case.