Oregon wins assisted suicide case against Ashcroft

I haven't seen any other diaries on this yet. By a two-to-one margin, the Ninth Circuit today upheld Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law over Ashcroft Justice's campaign to destroy it. The panel majority continued in effect the permanent injunction entered two years ago by Oregon Federal District Judge Robert "Maximum Bob" Jones.

The majority held that, while the District Court had actually lacked jurisdiction over Oregon's challenge to the Ashcroft Directive, the appeal was still valid when reconstrued as an administrative-law petition for review of a rulemaking decision. The panel granted the petition for three reasons:

1. Congress has not authorized the Attorney General to regulate the practice of medicine, and in the absence of a clear directive, that is for the states to do.
2. The Ashcroft Directive is not authorized by the Controlled Substances Act, because physician-assisted suicide does not fall within that law's limited federal purposes of regulating drug abuse and its prevention.
3. Inasmuch as the practice of medicine was federalized by the Controlled Substances Act, it was the Secretary of Health and Human Services rather than the Attorney General who was given the authority to regulate it.

In dissent, Circuit Judge J. Clifford Wallace argued that the Ashcroft Directive was valid on narrow administrative-law grounds -- namely, that the Attorney General was interpreting a regulation, not the Controlled Substances Act, and hence that his action merited greater deference.

This case may well go up on en banc review, but expect the panel decision to be sustained. Chalk one up for the good guys.

For a link to the decision, see:

http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/F63C3857EBE8263588256E9F007CAC71/$file/0235587.pdf?o penelement

For the Ninth Circuit press release summarizing the majority opinion and the defense, see:

http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/68621B180CDD63F388256EA0005CDA07/$file/press-release -ORassistedsuicideb.pdf?openelement