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Federal Court Finds California Assisted-Suicide Law
Unconstitutional
A person living with AIDS, joining Dr Jack Kevorkian as a
co-plaintiff, has won a declaration that California Penal Code section 401,
which makes it a felony for any person to deliberately aid, advise, or encourage
another to commit a suicide, violates the Due Process Clause of the US
Constitution.[1]
The plaintiff, a 35-year-old person living with AIDS, was
first diagnosed as probably HIV-positive in July 1984, before the availability
of HIV-antibody testing, was diagnosed with AIDS in 1993, and is now in a
terminal state, desiring assistance to commit suicide. Dr Kevorkian is, of
course, the well-known "suicide doctor," whose licence to practise medicine in
California was suspended in 1994 as a result of his publicized activities along
these lines. Marshall J decided that Kevorkian, because he is not presently
licensed in California, does not have standing to bring this challenge, and so
ruled only on the claim of the person living with AIDS.
Marshall referred to the 9th Circuit's recent decision in
Compassion in Dying v State of Washington,[2] in which the court held that the
State of Washington's law against assisting suicide was unconstitutional under
the Due Process Clause as applied to physician-assisted suicide. Following the
reasoning of the 9th Circuit, Marshall found that the California statute
violates due process by imposing "undue burden" on terminally ill patients
because the statute "does not merely place some restrictions on the right to
assisted suicide, but categorically prohibits all such conduct."
Marshall refrained from ruling on the plaintiff's Equal
Protection Clause claim, observing that the 9th Circuit had avoided addressing
this issue by premising its decision solely on the Due Process Clause. Lacking a
California Supreme Court decision on this point, Marshall noted that some
California Court of Appeal rulings indicated the unlikelihood that the statute
would be found to violate the state constitution.
http://www.aidslaw.ca/Maincontent/otherdocs/Newsletter
/October1996/19KEVORKE.html
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