Justices uphold Oregon law, rule Ashcroft erred as AG

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's challenge to the nation's only right-to-die law Tuesday and ruled that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft overstepped his authority when he sought to punish the Oregon doctors who helped terminally ill people end their lives.

The 6-3 decision was a victory for states and their independent-minded voters, and a defeat for social conservatives.

The case also showed new Chief Justice John Roberts in the camp of the court's most conservative members in his first significant decision. Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were the dissenters.

The Supreme Court majority said the states — not federal authorities — have long had the power to regulate the practice of medicine and the licensing of doctors.

They said Ashcroft was claiming an "extraordinary authority" to impose his own view on what is proper medical care for those who are near death.

Tuesday's decision clears the way for other states at least to consider adopting similar measures.

But the ruling also leaves open the possibility that the Republican-controlled Congress could amend the federal drug-control laws and forbid physicians from prescribing lethal medications.

Congress also could pass laws explicitly banning doctor-assisted suicide.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush was disappointed in the decision.

"The president remains fully committed to building a culture of life, a culture of life that is built on valuing life at all stages," he said.

The law has long prohibited suicide as well as aiding another's suicide. In 1994, however, Oregon's voters approved the Death With Dignity Act, which authorized doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to dying people who requested it. Two doctors must confirm the patient is an Oregon resident who "suffers from a terminal disease" that is likely to end his or her life within six months. The doctors must confirm the patient is of sound mind.

At least 208 people have used medication to end their lives since the law took effect seven years ago.

The Supreme Court appeared to endorse the state's right to take such a step in 1997. While the Constitution does not give individuals a "right to die," states are free to decide for themselves whether to permit physician-assisted suicide, the court said unanimously in a Washington state case.

But some social conservatives, including then-Sen. Ashcroft, R-Mo., and Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., strongly opposed the notion of doctors giving patients medicine that would end their lives. They urged the Clinton administration's attorney general, Janet Reno, to take action against Oregon and its doctors.

She refused, saying she did not have the authority "to displace the states as the primary regulators of the medical profession."

Shortly after taking office in 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft reversed Reno's decision and declared that a doctor's use of legal drugs to end a life did not serve a "legitimate medical purpose."

Citing a federal law against drug trafficking, the attorney general said Oregon's doctors who persisted in the face of his edict would lose their right to prescribe medication.

But Ashcroft's order ran into a stiff legal challenge from the start. Oregon's state officials and several doctors went to court to block it, and they won at every stage. A federal judge in Oregon, the U.S. court of appeals in San Francisco, and now the Supreme Court ruled that Ashcroft had exceeded his authority.

Writing for the court Tuesday, Justice Anthony Kennedy said Ashcroft had claimed for himself a power Congress had not given him.

The federal drug-control act of 1970 gave the attorney general the power to combat "drug dealing and trafficking as conventionally understood," not the power to tell doctors how they may use legal medications, Kennedy said.

Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor joined his opinion in the Oregon case.

Scalia said Ashcroft's reading of the law was reasonable and that the court's past decisions required deference to the executive branch to interpret Congress' intent in a particular statute. Thomas said the ruling didn't square with a 2004 high-court ruling that permitted use of drug laws to regulate medical marijuana.

Roberts' silent opposition to the ruling left no clues to his take on issues such as the scope of executive authority under federal drug laws and the balance between federal and state power. The case was the first high-profile one he'd heard and it was argued just days after he was confirmed as chief justice.

Roberts left unexplained how this case differs in his view from a 1997 court ruling that said states should be free to decide how to handle end-of-life issues. Roberts praised that ruling at the time, saying it was important "not to have too narrow a view of protecting personal rights."

In other action Tuesday, the court:

• Refused to hear an appeal from families of New York firefighters killed at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, to allow them to go forward with a lawsuit against New York City and Motorola for supplying the rescuers with faulty radios.

• Rejected an appeal from an anti-war protester convicted of violating the boundaries of a "restricted area" established during Bush's visit to South Carolina in 2002.

• Declined to block lawsuits brought on behalf of thousands of gypsies, Jews, Serbs and others who claim that the Vatican Bank received valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers during World War II.

Tuesday's other decisions were reported by The Associated Press. Scalia's and Thomas' dissenting arguments were summarized by Knight Ridder Newspapers.