Judge Rejects Law Blocking ‘Right to Die’

A Florida judge Thursday struck down a state law that empowered Gov. Jeb Bush to keep a severely brain-damaged woman on life support, calling it an unconstitutional breach of the woman’s right to have her own wishes to withhold medical treatment respected.

The law, passed in October by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, improperly gave Bush “unfettered discretion to control the nutrition and hydration, indeed the life and death,” of Terri Schiavo, Pinellas Circuit Judge W. Douglas Baird ruled.

Schiavo’s fate is at the center of one of the most drawn-out and bitterly contested right-to-die cases in U.S. history, and Thursday’s ruling seemed unlikely to resolve matters. It was immediately appealed by the governor’s office.

Schiavo, now 40, has been in a vegetative state for more than 14 years and is attached to a feeding and hydration tube.

Last fall, the tube was unplugged at the direction of her husband, who had waged a lengthy and ultimately successful battle in the courts to allow his wife to die. Immediately after the rushed passage of “Terri’s Law,” Bush ordered the tube reconnected, as the controversial legislation authorized him to do.

Michael Schiavo says his wife told him she didn’t want to be kept alive artificially. But Terri Schiavo left no written instructions to that effect, and her parents have cast doubts both on her husband’s account and his motives.

The appeal of Baird’s 23-page ruling was made to a state appellate court in Lakeland. The governor’s legal counsel, Ken Connor, said in a conference call with reporters that the appeal automatically bars Michael Schiavo from having the feeding tube removed anew. Connor also defended the law voided by the Clearwater-based judge.

“The governor has maintained all along that the courts do not have the monopoly of protecting the rights of the frail and the disabled,” Connor said. “Effectively, what this statute did was to add an additional layer of protection. It is not an encroachment on the courts’ authority, or the Legislature’s authority.”

Some Democratic members of the Legislature strenuously objected last autumn to Terri’s Law, calling the legislation a political gambit by Bush, the president’s younger brother, and fellow Republicans in the Legislature to court the religious right. Connor predicted the matter would wind up before the Florida Supreme Court or be taken up by the federal courts.

“Make no mistake, the governor believes very strongly that this statute is constitutional,” Connor said. He said Bush’s legal representatives should have the opportunity to put Terri’s Schiavo’s husband under oath to challenge his assertions. Both Michael Schiavo and his wife’s parents have accused each other of coveting the approximately $1 million paid out in a 1993 medical malpractice claim because doctors failed in advance to diagnose Terri Schiavo’s potassium imbalance, which led to her heart stopping and her vegetative state.

“There is a conflict of interest. He [Michael Schiavo] stands to gain by her death,” Connor said. Since his wife became incapacitated, Schiavo has had two children with another woman, Bush’s legal counsel noted.

In his ruling, Baird called Terri’s Law an improper delegation of legislative power to the governor, and a violation of Florida’s constitutionally enshrined right of citizens “to be let alone and free from government intrusion.” Under state law, Baird said, an individual’s right to privacy includes the right of self-determination and the freedom to choose or decline medical treatment.

“By substituting the personal judgment of the governor for that of the ‘patient,’ the act deprives every individual who is subject to its terms of his or her constitutionally guaranteed right to the privacy of his or her own medical decisions,” Baird wrote. “The governor is not required to consider, much less act in accord with, those desires.”

Terri Schiavo’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, have said they believe their daughter can improve if given the proper care and therapy.

In a statement, they accused Baird “of aiding and abetting Michael Schiavo in his continuing crimes against Terri.” They said his ruling Thursday amounts to “the unjust killing of a young woman who has demonstrated time and again that she very much wants to live.”