Justice Dept. Seeks End to Assisted-Suicide Law

The U.S. Justice Department challenged the state’s assisted suicide law, asking an appeals court to strike down the first-in-the-nation measure as a violation of federal laws that bar doctors from easing patients toward death.

In a filing with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that federal regulations prohibit doctors from prescribing lethal doses of controlled drugs or other medications.

“The attorney general has permissibly concluded that suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose,” the government said in its court papers, citing the provisions of the federal Controlled Substances Act.

Oregon’s law was first approved by voters in 1994 and reaffirmed in 1997. Since 1997, at least 70 people, most of them terminally ill, have killed themselves with drugs in Oregon.