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Bush wants federal authority on doctor prescriptions { January 18 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06018/639617.stmhttp://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06018/639617.stm
Supreme Court upholds Oregon suicide statute
The terminally ill can get drugs from doctors to end lives
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
By Michael McGough, Post-Gazette National Bureau
WASHINGTON -- In a major defeat for the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court told physicians in Oregon yesterday that they could continue to prescribe drugs to help terminally ill patients end their lives without fear of retribution from the federal government.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled that the attorney general in 2001, John Ashcroft, exceeded his authority when he threatened to revoke the prescription-writing privileges of doctors who took advantage of the Death With Dignity Act passed by Oregon voters in a 1994 referendum.
The law allows physicians to prescribe -- but not administer -- medications to mentally competent, terminally ill persons who want to end their lives.
Although yesterday's ruling was couched in the dry technicalities of administrative law, it is sure to incite passions on both sides of the assisted-suicide debate and embolden supporters of assisted suicide in other states to follow Oregon's example. A poll released by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Jan. 5 found that 46 percent of Americans support the right to assisted suicide while 45 percent oppose it.
But because the decision was based not on the Constitution but on the meaning of the Controlled Substances Act, the ruling also could galvanize opponents of assisted suicide to lobby for federal legislation banning the practice or giving the attorney general the authority the court said he lacks.
"The attorney general has rule-making power to fulfill his duties under the Controlled Substances Act," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in yesterday's majority opinion. "The specific respects in which he is authorized to make rules, however, instruct us that he is not authorized to make a rule declaring illegitimate a medical standard for care and treatment of patients that is specifically authorized under state law."
Justice Kennedy was joined in the majority by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. In a dissenting opinion signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Ashcroft directive should have been upheld as a "straightforward application of our rule that an agency's interpretation of its own regulations is controlling unless [it is] plainly inconsistent with the regulation."
"The court's divided opinion today is puzzling, and I'm deeply troubled by its potentially far-reaching impact on congressional attempts to regulate dangerous drugs," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who was among members of Congress who asked the Clinton administration to revoke the controlled-substances registration of Oregon physicians who assisted patients to commit suicide.
"Since this case involves the court's interpretation of a statute -- and not its interpretation of the Constitution -- I anticipate Congress will now take steps to solve the problems created by this decision," Mr. Hatch told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who inherited the Ashcroft directive, expressed disappointment with yesterday's ruling but did not say whether he would ask Congress for more legal authority over assisted suicide.
"We are disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision today in Gonzales v. Oregon, which permits physicians in Oregon to use federally-controlled substances to aid their patient's suicide efforts," Mr. Gonzales' office said in a statement. "The Department of Justice remains committed to enforcing our nation's laws and ensuring that drugs are not diverted to unlawful uses."
Although the Oregon case has been widely portrayed as another chapter in the debate between states' rights and federal authority, all of the justices in yesterday's decision seemed to accept that Congress could legislate controls on prescription drugs on a national basis. The dispute concerned whether Congress had authorized the attorney general to use his power over physicians' rights to prescribe controlled substances to second-guess decisions by the state about appropriate medical practice.
In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy noted that Congress did not authorize the attorney general to "define the substantive standards of medical practice as part of his authority." But Justice Scalia countered in his dissent that "virtually every relevant source of authoritative meaning confirms that the phrase 'legitimate medical purpose' does not include intentionally assisting suicide."
Yesterday's ruling comes seven months after the court in the case of Gonzales v. Raich upheld the right of the attorney general under the Controlled Substances Act to prosecute the possession of marijuana even in states where its use for medical purposes is legal and even when the marijuana is grown entirely inside that state.
Justice Thomas, who dissented in the Raich case on the grounds that Congress lacked the authority under the Commerce Clause to override California's legalization of medical marijuana, tweaked his colleagues who upheld federal authority in that case but ruled against it in the assisted-suicide situation.
"The court's reliance upon the constitutional principles that it rejected in Raich--albeit under the guise of statutory interpretation--is perplexing, to say the least," Justice Thomas wrote.
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(Michael McGough can be reached at mmcgough@nationalpress.com or 202-662-7025.)
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