WASHINGTON (ABP) — The U. S. Supreme Court agreed Feb. 22 to hear a case involving a state's assisted-suicide law, while turning away two other appeals on controversial topics.
The justices announced they would hear the federal Justice Department's appeal of a lower court's ruling. That ruling kept the Justice Department from enforcing a policy that would effectively block Oregon's assisted-suicide law.
The 11-year-old Death With Dignity Act is the only one of its kind in the nation. It allows doctors to prescribe lethal amounts of narcotics to terminally ill patients who have elected to end their own lives.
The Justice Department under former President Bill Clinton decided in 1998 not to use federal narcotic-regulating powers in an attempt to block implementation of the law. But in November 2001, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed that policy, announcing it was the Justice Department's intention to strip doctors who participated in assisted suicides of the ability to write drug prescriptions.
The case is Gonzales vs. Oregon, No. 04-623.
In other news Feb. 22, the justices declined a request by the original Roe vs. Wade plaintiff to reconsider that landmark decision, which legalized abortion in all 50 states. Without comment, the court refused a request from Norma McCorvey — on whose behalf the case was filed under the pseudonym “Jane Roe” — to reconsider that 1973 decision. Since the case was decided, McCorvey has embraced evangelical Christianity and now describes herself, according to her website, as “100 percent pro-life.”
The court also declined Feb. 22 to hear a case regarding an Alabama law that bans selling sex toys in the state. A Huntsville adult-store owner and several state residents challenged the 1998 law, which bans only the sale and not the possession of the devices. They argued that it violated constitutional privacy rights, citing the high court's 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas decision that overturned state bans on gay sex.
A divided panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined last year to overturn the law but sent the case back to a lower court for further consideration of issues it raised.
A judge's order banning implementation of the law will remain in effect until the other legal issues in the case are worked out.