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2005
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January 17
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2006
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Alberto R Gonzales, Attorney General, et al, v Oregon et al
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04-623
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546 US ___ 126 SCt 94, 2006 US LEXIS 767, 74 USLW 4068, 06 Cal Daily Op Serv 433, 2006 Daily Journal DAR 608, 19 Fla L Weekly Fed S 49
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Summary judgment granted to plaintiffs in part, ''Oregon v Ashcroft'', 192 F Supp2d 1077 ( D Ore 2002) affirmed, 368 F3d 1118 ( 9th Cir 2003) Cert granted, sub nom ''Gonzales v Oregon'', 125 SCt 1299 (2005)
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'',
546 U.S. ___ (2006), was a
United States Supreme Court case which ruled that the
United States Attorney General could not enforce the
Controlled Substances Act against physicians prescribing drugs for the assisted suicide of the terminally ill as permitted by an
Oregon law. It was the first major case heard under the leadership of Chief Justice
John Roberts, Jr. .
In
1994 , voters in the State of Oregon approved
Oregon Ballot Measure 16 by a margin of 31,962 votes and retained this measure by 220,445 votes in
A 1997 Special Election attempt to repeal the law. The law permits physicians to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to a patient agreed by two doctors to be within six months of dying from an incurable condition. As of
2004 , 208 individuals had ended their lives under the law.
On November 9, 2001,
Attorney General John Ashcroft issued an Interpretive Rule that assisted-physician suicide was not a legitimate medical purpose, and that any physician administering federally controlled drugs for that purpose would be in violation of the
Controlled Substances Act . The State of Oregon, joined by a physician, a pharmacist, and some terminally ill patients, all from Oregon, filed a challenge to the Attorney General's rule in the
U.S. District Court For The District Of Oregon . The court ruled for Oregon and issued a permanent
Injunction against the enforcement of the Interpretive Rule. This was affirmed by the
Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals .
In a 6-3 decision written by Justice
Anthony Kennedy , the Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit's judgment, but employed different reasoning. Justices
Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas filed dissents. The majority opinion did not dispute the power of the federal government to regulate drugs, but disagreed that the statute in place empowered the U.S. Attorney General to overrule state laws determining what constituted the appropriate use of medications that were not themselves prohibited.
Justice Scalia, in a dissent joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas, argued that under the Supreme Court precedent deference was due to the Attorney General's intepretation of the statute. He wrote that "
{Link without Title} f the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death".
In addition to joining Justice Scalia's dissent, Justice Thomas also filed a brief dissent in which he argued that the court's majority opinion was inconsistent with the reasoning in ''
Gonzales V. Raich ''. Thomas also dissented in that decision, in which five of the six justices in the majority in ''Oregon'' found broad federal authority under the Controlled Substances Act for Congress to forbid the growth of medical marijuana. Thomas had argued for a more limited congressional power under the Commerce Clause in ''Raich'', which focused on intra-state vs. inter-state commerce. In ''Oregon'', by contrast, the case was instead a matter of the validity of an executive interpretation of that statute.
