Agency Won’t Back Off Assisted Suicide Ruling

The Justice Department said it will fight a judge’s ruling that banned the department from interfering with an Oregon law that allows doctors to help terminally ill people kill themselves.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft challenged the law last November but was rebuffed by a judge who ruled in April that the Justice Department lacks the authority to overturn the state law, the only one of its kind in the nation.

Justice Department lawyers filed paperwork on their plans to appeal to the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Jones said in his decision in April that Oregon voters twice endorsed the law and “have chosen to resolve the moral, legal and ethical debate on physician-assisted suicide for themselves.”

State health officials say at least 91 people, mostly cancer patients, have killed themselves using the law.