Ethics Newsline®

SAN FRANCISCO
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft exceeded his authority when he tried to shut down Oregon’s assisted-suicide law, a federal appeals court ruled last week, calling Ashcroft’s move “unlawful and unenforceable.”

Oregon voters approved the state’s Death With Dignity Act twice, in 1994 and in 1997, giving terminally ill patients the right to receive a life-ending dose of medicine after satisfying a series of safeguards.

As a senator, John Ashcroft asked President Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, to block the law. She refused, but Ashcroft took the step himself after being appointed to the position by President Bush in 2001.

Citing a federal law designed to crack down on the narcotics trade, Ashcroft warned Oregon doctors that they could be barred from practice and prosecuted if they complied with the Oregon law, reported the New York Times.

Last week, ruling on a challenge to Ashcroft’s directive, a three-member panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Oregon’s law, ruling that Ashcroft had distorted the intent of the federal law and abrogated states’ rights.

“The attorney general’s unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers … far exceeds the scope of his authority under federal law,” one of the court’s more conservative judges, Richard Tallman, wrote for the panel’s 2-to-1 majority.

“The Ashcroft directive not only lacks clear congressional authority, it also violates the plain language of [federal law],” Tallman continued. “We express no opinion on whether [assisted suicide] is inconsistent with the public interest or constitutes illegitimate medical care. This case is simply about who gets to decide.”

The court said states, not representatives of the Justice Department, get to decide, reported the Los Angeles Times.

Justice Department lawyers said they were reviewing whether or not to appeal the case to the full Ninth Circuit court or to the Supreme Court.