Lee v. State of Oregon

[Editor’s Note: The casebook Bioethics: Health Care, Human Rights, and the Law (Arthur LaFrance ed., 2d ed. 2006) erroneously gives the citation of this case as “69 F. Supp. 1491.” The correct citation is “869 F. Supp. 1491.”] Oregon (defendant) passed a law authorizing physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Under the law, anyone adhering to the terms of the law could not be prosecuted for helping a patient who requested assistance to commit suicide. Dr. Gary Lee and another physician, along with a group of terminally ill patients and operators of residential care facilities (collectively, opponents) (plaintiffs), opposed the law and sued Oregon. The opponents argued that the law would facilitate requests for physician-assisted suicide by terminally ill patients when those patients were under undue influence caused by depression or other inappropriate influences that impaired judgment. The opponents also asserted that the law was problematic because physicians often misdiagnosed terminal illness and misjudged how long a person with an illness might live. The opponents claimed that because Oregon law criminalized assisted suicide, permitting assisted suicide of the terminally ill violated the Equal Protection Clause. The opponents likewise contended that the law deprived terminally ill people of the constitutional protections of the Due Process Clause. The opponents moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent the law from going into effect until the courts decided on the law’s constitutionality.