By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-04-03 19:31:06 | Updated at 2025-04-04 17:29:17
21 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // A federal appeals court recently heard a challenge to California’s physician-assisted suicide law from disability rights and patient advocacy groups arguing the policy unlawfully discriminates on the basis of race and disability.
CatholicVote previously reported that four organizations and two individuals sued California in 2023. Their case alleged that California’s 2016 End of Life Option Act violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and fails to provide equal protection for terminally ill patients as mandated by the 14th Amendment.
“The lawsuit claims that under the California law, people with life-threatening disabilities are treated differently than non-disabled people when they express a desire for suicide,” CatholicVote reported at the time. “It claims they are sometimes denied appropriate mental health services and medical care by both physicians and insurance companies, and can be pressured into choosing suicide.”
The plaintiffs are Not Dead Yet, United Spinal Association, Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, Institute for Patients’ Rights, Lonnie VanHook, and Inrid Tischer.
The Archdiocese of San Francisco reported that Matt Valliere, executive director of the Institute for Patients’ Rights and the Patients’ Rights Action Fund, said, “When you have legal assisted suicide, some people get suicide prevention but other people — namely those with life-threatening disabilities — get suicide help. And the main difference is somebody’s health and disability status. And that is against the law.”
According to the plaintffs’ website, End Assisted Suicide, a judge dismissed the case in March 2024, but the plaintiffs appealed in July. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the appeal March 26, the archdiocese reported.
The archdiocese added that attorney Ernest Galvan told judges on behalf of the plaintiffs that the physician-assisted suicide law “is not only pushing people toward death; it is pushing people to an inferior system of medical care.”
The End Assisted Suicide website states that California’s physician-assisted suicide law means that “people with life-threatening disabilities and only people with life-threatening disabilities who say they want to die can get a state-facilitated death.”
“Everyone else gets suicide prevention and the protections afforded by the law and professional standards. That’s not choice, it’s eugenics,” the website continues, adding that “people of color, especially those who are economically marginalized, are more likely to be steered towards suicide by their providers, who may view their lives as less worthy of preservation due to the combined forces of racism and ableism.”
According to Valliere, a final ruling will likely take months, but he noted that the judges “were not hostile to our side” and indicated that they have open minds about the challenge.
