Court rejects right to assisted suicide

Christian Century, July 16, 1997

In a unanimous decision June 26 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws forbidding doctor-assisted euthanasia. "In almost every state, indeed, in almost every Western democracy, it is a crime to assist a suicide," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the court's opinion. "The states' assisted-suicide bans are not innovations. Rather they are longstanding expressions of states' commitment to the protection and preservation of human life."

In its decision the court upheld laws in Washington and New York states--overturned by lower federal courts--that make it a crime for doctors to give life-ending drugs to mentally competent but terminally ill patients who no longer want to live. "The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it," Rehnquist argued. "That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted `right' to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the due-process clause" of the Constitution.

Three justices, Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter, each wrote a separate concurring opinion, with Souter suggesting that he could change his mind if Congress or state legislatures enacted laws allowing assisted suicide. "While I do not decide for all time that [the] claim [to a constitutional right] should not be recognized, I acknowledge the legislative institutional competence as the better one to deal with that claim at this time," Souter wrote.

The case had been closely watched by the religious community, the medical profession and legal experts, with most religious leaders urging the court to maintain the ban. Many of them had filed friend-of-the-court briefs urging the justices to find the New York and Washington laws constitutional. "The Supreme Court displayed wisdom and restraint today by upholding state laws that protected terminally ill patients from those who would offer to `assist' their suicides," stated Roman Catholic Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. "The court's ruling is consonant with two centuries of legal tradition, and over 20 centuries of moral wisdom recognizing that healers must not be agents of death," Law added.

Also on June 26 the court ruled that Congress violated free-speech rights when it passed the Communications Decency Act to protect children from pornography on the Internet. In a 7-2 decision--the court's first in the realm of cyberspace--the justices ruled that portions of the act violated the freespeech rights of Americans. The two dissenting justices, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, agreed that parts of the law unconstitutionally limited adult communication.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, said the law is too vague and destroys adults' rights while trying to protect children. "It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials," he wrote. "But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults." The decision was lamented by religious organizations opposing pornography and cheered by media companies contending that the law violated their First Amendment rights.

Jerry Kirk, cochairman of the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, vowed that leaders in his coalition will now work harder to inform parents about devices to block Internet pornography from their children's view and to encourage libraries and schools to use such mechanisms on computers used by children. President Clinton, who signed the act into law in 1996, announced that he plans a meeting of Internet industry leaders and groups representing parents, teachers and librarians. `With the right technology and rating systems, we can help ensure that our children don't end up in the red-light districts of cyberspace," the president said.

In another religion-related case the court, without comment, rejected an appeal by a California landlord who cited her religious beliefs in refusing to rent to an unmarried couple. On June 27 the justices left intact a California Supreme Court ruling that said landlord Evelyn Smith violated a state fair-housing law. In her appeal Smith relied in part on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the 1993 law the high court struck down June 25. That law made it more difficult for government to interfere with private religious practice. Smith said she should be exempt from having to abide by the housing law be cause renting to people who have sexual relations outside marriage violates her Christian beliefs. Two years ago the Supreme Court rejected an almost identical appeal from an Alaska rental agent. Smith's appeal to the Supreme Court was supported by a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by a coalition of religious groups, including the American Jewish Congress, the National Association of Evangelicals and the National Council of Churches. But the state fairhousing agency urged the justices to reject the appeal, arguing that "because nothing in her religious beliefs requires her to be a landlord, the burden on her free-exercise rights is not substantial.