Top court to decide US appeal in Oregon suicide law

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The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it would decide whether the Bush administration can stop Oregon doctors from helping terminally ill patients commit suicide, despite a state law allowing such assistance.

Oregon is only U.S. state to allow physician-assisted suicide. Since the state law took effect in 1997, more than 170 people have ended their lives.

The high court agreed to hear a Bush administration appeal arguing that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft correctly construed federal law to prohibit distribution of controlled drugs to assist suicides, regardless of state law.

The administration appealed after a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that Ashcroft’s 2001 directive was unlawful and unenforceable, and that he had overstepped his authority.

The directive threatened to revoke prescription-writing licenses for physicians who write orders for life-ending drugs.

Under the Oregon law, called the Death with Dignity Act and twice approved by the state’s voters, terminally ill patients must get a certification from two doctors stating they are of sound mind and have less than six months to live.

A prescription for lethal drugs is then written by the doctor, and the patients administer the drugs themselves.

Ashcroft’s directive declared that assisting suicide was not a legitimate medical purpose under the Controlled Substances Act and that prescribing federally controlled drugs for that purpose was against the law.

He reversed the policy adopted by his predecessor, Attorney General Janet Reno, during the Clinton administration. Conservative lawmakers and groups opposed Reno’s decision.

Administration lawyers told the Supreme Court that federal drug laws took precedence over the state’s traditional control over the practice of medicine.

“The attorney general’s reasonable interpretation of the comprehensive federal statute must prevail over the determination by a particular state that departs radically from long-accepted legal and ethical norms,” Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement said in the appeal.

Clement said the appeals court ruling threatened “to undermine federal authority to regulate in numerous other areas that may have an effect on the practice of medicine.”

Oregon, which successfully defended its law before a federal judge and before the appeals court, opposed the administration’s appeal.

Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers said Congress did not authorize Ashcroft to overrule a state’s decision about specific medical uses of controlled substances.

“Whether a state can authorize physicians to assist those who seek to avoid intolerable pain and loss of control and dignity at the end of their lives is not at issue here. At most, this case is about the means those physicians may use,” Myers said.

The justice will hear arguments and then issue a decision in the case during their upcoming term that begins in October. 

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