HIGH COURT UPHOLDS OREGON LAW BACKING DOCTOR-ASSISTED SUICIDE

WASHINGTON -- Reigniting a national debate over right-to-die issues,
the Supreme Court barred the Justice Department from interfering with
Oregon's law allowing physicians to help terminally ill patients end
their lives. Voting 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining
conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in dissent,
the court ruled that the administration exceeded its authority under
the 1970 Controlled Substances Act when it threatened to penalize
doctors who prescribed life-ending drugs under the Oregon law, the
only one of its kind in the country. The Justice Department said it
was "disappointed" with the ruling. Advocates of the law said they
expect the ruling to set off responses both in Congress and in
states, such as California and Vermont, where similar measures are pending.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) said he was "deeply troubled" by the
ruling and added, "I anticipate Congress will now take steps to solve
the problems created by this decision." Peg Sandeen, executive
director of the Death with Dignity National Center, a Portland, Ore.,
group that supports the law, predicted a political fight. "This is
the same Congress that tried to intervene in Terri Schiavo's case,"
she said, referring to last year's right-to-die case in Florida.
Since the Oregon law took effect in 1998, 208 patients have used it
to end their lives, according to the state.

Over the years, the Supreme Court repeatedly has deferred to states
in end-of-life decisions.

In 1990, the court upheld a Missouri statute barring the termination
of life support from an incompetent patient without clear and
convincing evidence that this was the patient's wish. Seven years
later, the court upheld a Washington state law making assisted
suicide a crime. Last year, the high court declined to intervene in
the Schiavo case, despite special congressional action creating
federal jurisdiction over a state judge's decision that Ms. Schiavo
would have wanted her life support shut off. Yesterday's opinion came
as a surprise because a different six-justice majority last year
found a California law authorizing medicinal use of marijuana was no
bar to prosecution of patients under federal narcotics laws. The
majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy rested on a close reading
of the Controlled Substances Act and drew distinctions between the
situations in California and Oregon. Where the drugs used under the
Oregon law are routinely prescribed painkillers, Congress had
explicitly determined that marijuana had no accepted medical use.
Thus, California's voter-approved Compassionate Use Act couldn't be
invoked to stymie federal authorities who sought to prosecute patients.

The federal narcotics law, however, "targets only conventional drug
abuse and excludes the attorney general from decisions on medical
policy," Justice Kennedy wrote.

And while a "political and moral debate" surrounded
physician-assisted suicide, Congress remained silent on the matter.

Thus, he wrote, the issue boiled down to "who decides whether a
particular activity is in 'the course of professional practice' or
done for a 'legitimate medical purpose,' " in the federal statute's language.

Because the act recognized the state role in regulating medicine, the
majority found that Oregon's determinations should be honored unless
explicitly overruled by Congress. To find otherwise, Justice Kennedy
wrote, would empower the attorney general to "effect a radical shift
of authority from the states to the federal government to define
general standards of medical practice in any locality." John Paul
Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Stephen Breyer joined the opinion, which upheld lower-court rulings.

Justice Scalia, writing for the dissenters, wrote the court should
defer to the attorney general's determination that assisted suicide
isn't a "legitimate medical purpose" for doctors to prescribe drugs.

Justice Scalia said "virtually every medical authority from
Hippocrates to the current American Medical Association confirms that
assisting suicide has seldom or never been viewed" as legitimate and
no other state had authorized it. "The fact that many in Oregon
believe that the boundaries of 'legitimate medicine' should be
extended to include assisted suicide does not change the fact that
the overwhelming weight of authority" holds otherwise, he wrote. In a
separate dissent, Justice Thomas accused the majority of ignoring its
own precedent -- from which he also dissented -- in the
medical-marijuana case. As a matter of doctrine, "I agree with
limiting the applications" of federal narcotics law "consistent with
the principles of federalism and our constitutional structure," he
wrote. "But that is now water under the dam."