Disability groups appeal for another chance to block California's assisted suicide law

PASADENA (CN) — In an effort to revive a suit to challenging California’s assisted suicide law, two people with disabilities and four disability rights groups told a Ninth Circuit panel Wednesday that the law not only impinges on patients’ rights, but the business of the advocacy groups.

“Communities Actively Living Independent and Free’s core business activities is to help people with severe disabilities overcome the desire they may feel to end it all and to see that you can live a full life in the community despite your disabilities, and the state’s regime of assisted suicide, of creating this model where the state endorses just killing yourself, that directly injures that core business activity for Communities Actively Living,” said Ernest Galvan of Rosen, Bien, Galvan and Grunfeld LLP, an attorney for the disability rights organizations, including Communities Actively Living Independent and Free.

The state’s End of Life Option Act, enacted in 2016, allows terminally ill people in California to choose to end their life using prescribed medicines.

Under the law, people living with disabilities are living “in a system where you’re constantly getting the message that you’re better off dead,” Galvan said.

The plaintiffs initially sued California, along with a number of state and officials, in 2023. They claim the assisted suicide law discriminates against people with terminal disabilities by denying them medical care in the form of coercing them to seek assisted suicide in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, a Barack Obama appointee, asked Galvan to explain how exactly the law steers people into ending their life versus providing it as an option — citing a federal judge’s dismissal that determined the two plaintiffs with disabilities lacked standing and that terminally ill patients’ decision to request assisted suicide medication is voluntary and not a violation of the ACA.

The law creates two tiers of patients, Galvan argued, one tier where people with suicidal ideation who don’t have terminal illnesses are given “life sustaining intervention” to prevent suicide by medical professionals while people with terminal illnesses are given “inferior” care that pushes them towards death.

“Counselor, are you arguing that people have a fundamental right to suicide prevention?” U.S. Circuit Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr., a Joe Biden appointee, asked.

People have the right to be free of “state-created danger” and they have a fundamental right to life and liberty, Galvan said.

“They have a fundamental right to be free of state action that encourages suicide. Do they have a fundamental right to suicide prevention? That depends on the circumstances,” he added.

Jessica Butterick, California’s attorney, argued that though the disability advocacy groups’ claims rest on their contention that the state is forcing them to commit suicide, there’s no coercion under the law and suicide prevention services are available to anyone that wants them.

“It’s perfectly appropriate and not discriminatory nor legally improper for the state not to coerce or involuntarily insist on suicide prevention services for people at the very ends of their lives,” she said.

As for the individual plaintiffs standing, Butterick added that a reasonable medical professional needs to determine if someone is terminally ill or not.

“The problem, Your Honor, is that patients can’t opt in to being terminally ill,” she added.

Referring to Ingrid Tischer, one of the individual plaintiffs with disabilities, Mendoza also asked Galvan about the definition of ’terminal’ in the case.

“With regards to the plaintiff Tishcer, though, was she diagnosed with a terminal disease?” asked Mendoza,

“No, she’s never had a doctor say ‘oh my gosh, you’re terminal.’ However, and this is a problem with the statute that we’re challenging, that term ‘terminalness’ or being terminal is an elastic concept under the statue. That’s why we have people in this country now getting assisted suicide for anorexia, for example, in that if you simply stop treatment for anorexia, stop eating, stop hydration, you’re going to be terminal within five days to three weeks.” Galvan said.

Tischer, he added, asked a doctor to refer her with rehabilitation services after a surgery, but the doctor denied the request, making her more likely to be at risk of stopping her medical treatments and making herself terminally ill.

The judges said they’d take the matter under submission.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle, sitting by appointment from the Eastern District of Texas, rounded out the panel.