This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before

publication in the New York Reports.

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77 

Sara Myers et al.,

 Plaintiffs,

Eric A. Seiff, et al.,

 Appellants,

 v.

Eric Schneiderman, &c.,

 Respondent,

et al.,

 Defendants.

Edwin G. Schallert, for appellants.

Anisha S. Dasgupta, for respondent.

Michael R. Aiello, et al.; New York State Catholic

Conference; Not Dead Yet, et al.; New York Civil Liberties Union;

Alan A. Pfeffer et al.; Agudath Israel of America; New York

Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys; American

Medical Student Association, et al.; Richard N. Gottfried, et

al.; Betty Rollin, et al.; National Association of Criminal

Defense Lawyers; Vincent Bonventre, et al.; Unitarian

Universalist Association, et al.; Compassion & Choices, amici

curiae.

Per Curiam:

Plaintiffs ask us to declare a constitutional right to

"aid-in-dying," which they define (and we refer to herein) as the

right of a mentally competent and terminally ill person to obtain

a prescription for a lethal dosage of drugs from a physician, to

be taken at some point to cause death. Although New York has

long recognized a competent adult's right to forgo life-saving

medical care, we reject plaintiffs' argument that an individual

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has a fundamental constitutional right to aid-in-dying as they

define it. We also reject plaintiffs' assertion that the State's

prohibition on assisted suicide is not rationally related to

legitimate state interests. 

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Plaintiffs filed the instant action against New York

State's Attorney General and several District Attorneys,1

requesting declaratory and injunctive relief to permit "aid-indying," whereby a mentally competent, terminally ill patient may

obtain a prescription from a physician to cause death. 

Plaintiffs request a declaratory judgment that physicians who

provide aid-in-dying in this manner are not criminally liable

under the State's assisted suicide statutes -- Penal Law § 120.30

and § 125.15 (3).2 They further request an injunction

prohibiting the prosecution of physicians who issue such

prescriptions to terminally ill, mentally competent patients.

When the complaint was filed, plaintiffs included three

1 Plaintiffs discontinued the action against the District

Attorneys after entering into a stipulation that all parties

would be bound by any result reached in the litigation between

plaintiffs and the Attorney General.

2 Penal Law § 120.30 provides that "[a] person is guilty of

promoting a suicide attempt when [such individual] intentionally

causes or aids another person to attempt suicide." Penal Law §

125.15 (3) provides that "[a] person is guilty of manslaughter in

the second degree when . . . [such person] intentionally causes

or aids another person to commit suicide."

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mentally competent, terminally ill patients. Two of those

plaintiffs have died, and the third is in remission. Plaintiffs

also include individual medical providers who assert that fear of

prosecution has prevented them from exercising their best

professional judgment when counseling and treating their

patients. They are joined by organizational plaintiff End of

Life Choices, which sued on its own behalf and on behalf of its

clients, for whom it provides "information and counseling on

informed choices in end of-of-life decisionmaking."

The Attorney General moved to dismiss the complaint on

the grounds that plaintiffs failed to state a cause of action and

did not present a justiciable controversy (see CPLR 3211 [a] [7],

[2]). Supreme Court granted the motion, and plaintiffs appealed. 

The Appellate Division modified on the law, declaring that the

assisted suicide statutes provide a valid statutory basis to

prosecute physicians who provide aid-in-dying and that the

statutes do not violate the State Constitution, and as so

modified, affirmed (140 AD3d 51, 65 [1st Dept 2016]). Plaintiffs

appealed to this Court as of right, pursuant to CPLR 5601 (b)

(1).

On appeal, plaintiffs argue that the State's assisted

suicide statutes do not prohibit aid-in-dying as a matter of law,

and that the Appellate Division's "literal" interpretation of the

statutes is flawed. Alternatively, plaintiffs contend that

application of the assisted suicide statutes to aid-in-dying

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violates their equal protection and due process rights under the

State Constitution.

II. REVIEWABILITY

"On a motion to dismiss pursuant to CPLR 3211, the

pleading is to be afforded a liberal construction" (Leon v

Martinez, 84 NY2d 83, 87–88 [1994], citing CPLR 3026). "We

accept the facts as alleged in the complaint as true, accord

plaintiffs the benefit of every possible favorable inference, and

determine only whether the facts as alleged fit within any

cognizable legal theory" (id.). "However, 'allegations

consisting of bare legal conclusions, as well as factual claims

inherently incredible or flatly contradicted by documentary

evidence are not entitled to such consideration'" (Simkin v

Blank, 19 NY3d 46, 52 [2012], quoting Maas v Cornell Univ., 94

NY2d 87, 91 [1999]; see Connaughton v Chipotle Mexican Grill,

Inc., 29 NY3d 137, 142-143 [2017]).

We reject plaintiffs' argument that the lower courts

improperly resolved numerous factual issues. This case involves

questions of law, including: whether aid-in-dying constitutes

assisted suicide within the meaning of the Penal Law; whether a

competent terminally ill person has a fundamental right to

physician-assisted suicide; and whether denying a competent,

terminally ill patient aid-in-dying violates that patient's right

to equal treatment under the law. As there are no countervailing

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reasonable interpretations, these questions can be decided

without any factual development. 

III. PLAINTIFFS' STATUTORY CLAIM

Plaintiffs initially assert that we should interpret

the assisted suicide statutes to exclude physicians who provide

aid-in-dying. Such a reading would run counter to our

fundamental tenets of statutory construction, and would require

that we read into the statutes words and meaning wholly absent

from their text (see Majewski v Broadalbin-Perth Cent. Sch.

Dist., 91 NY2d 577, 583 [1998]). 

"The governing rule of statutory construction is that

courts are obliged to interpret a statute to effectuate the

intent of the Legislature, and when the statutory language is

clear and unambiguous, it should be construed so as to give

effect to the plain meaning of the words used" (People v

Finnegan, 85 NY2d 53, 58 [1995] [internal quotation omitted]). 

"[C]ourts may not reject a literal construction [of a statute]

unless it is evident that a literal construction does not

correctly reflect the legislative intent" (Matter of Schinasi,

277 NY 252, 259 [1938]).

"Suicide" is not defined in the Penal Law, and

therefore "we must give the term its ordinary and commonly

understood meaning" (People v Ocasio, 28 NY3d 178, 181 [2016]

[internal quotations omitted]). Suicide has long been understood

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as "the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily

and intentionally" (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary [11th ed

2003]; see Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language

[ed 1828]). Black's Law Dictionary defines "suicide" as "[t]he

act of taking one's own life," and "assisted suicide" as "[t]he

intentional act of providing a person with the medical means or

the medical knowledge to commit suicide" (10th ed 2014). Aid-indying falls squarely within the ordinary meaning of the statutory

prohibition on assisting a suicide. 

The assisted suicide statutes apply to anyone who

assists an attempted or completed suicide. There are no

exceptions, and the statutes are unqualified in scope, creating

an "irrefutable inference . . . that what is omitted or not

included was intended to be omitted or excluded" (People v

Jackson, 87 NY2d 782, 788 [1996] [internal quotation omitted]). 

Furthermore, this Court previously resolved any doubt as to the

scope of the ban on assisted suicide. In People v Duffy, we

explained that "section 125.15 (3)'s proscription against

intentionally causing or aiding a suicide applies even where the

defendant is motivated by 'sympathetic' concerns, such as the

desire to relieve a terminally ill person from the agony of a

painful disease" (79 NY2d 611, 615 [1992], citing Staff Notes of

the Commission on Revision of the Penal Law, Proposed New York

Penal Law, McKinney's Spec. Pamph. [1964], at 339).

As written, the assisted suicide statutes apply to a

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physician who intentionally prescribes a lethal dosage of a drug

because such act constitutes "promoting a suicide attempt" (Penal

Law § 120.30) or "aid[ing] another person to commit suicide"

(Penal Law § 125.15 [3]). We therefore reject plaintiffs'

statutory construction claim.

IV. PLAINTIFFS' CONSTITUTIONAL CLAIMS

Alternatively, plaintiffs claim that the assisted

suicide statutes, if applied to aid-in-dying, would violate their

rights under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of our

State Constitution. We reject those claims. 

A. Equal Protection

Plaintiffs allege that the assisted suicide statutes

violate the State Equal Protection Clause because some, but not

all, patients may hasten death by directing the withdrawal or

withholding of life-sustaining medical assistance. Plaintiffs

therefore contend that the criminalization of aid-in-dying

discriminates unlawfully between those terminally ill patients

who can choose to die by declining life-sustaining medical

assistance, and those who cannot.

Our State's equal protection guarantees are coextensive

with the rights protected under the federal Equal Protection

Clause (see People v Aviles, 28 NY3d 497, 502 [2016]; Esler v

Walters, 56 NY2d 306, 313–314 [1982]). In Vacco v Quill, the

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United States Supreme Court held that New York State's laws

banning assisted suicide do not unconstitutionally distinguish

between individuals (521 US 793, 797 [1997]). As the Court

explained, "[e]veryone, regardless of physical condition, is

entitled, if competent, to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical

treatment; no one is permitted to assist a suicide. Generally,

laws that apply evenhandedly to all unquestionably comply with

equal protection" (id. at 800 [emphasis in original]). The

Supreme Court has not retreated from that conclusion, and we see

no reason to hold otherwise.

B. Due Process

In support of their due process argument, plaintiffs

assert that their fundamental right to self-determination and to

control the course of their medical treatment encompasses the

right to choose aid-in-dying. They further assert that the

assisted suicide statutes unconstitutionally burden that

fundamental right. 

In Washington v Glucksberg, the United States Supreme

Court "examin[ed] our Nation's history, legal traditions, and

practices," and concluded that "the asserted 'right' to

assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty

interest protected by the Due Process Clause" of the Federal

Constitution (521 US 702, 710, 728 [1997]). We have, at times,

held that our State Due Process Clause provides greater

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protections than its federal counterpart (see Aviles, 28 NY3d at

505), and therefore Supreme Court precedent rejecting plaintiffs'

claim as a matter of federal constitutional due process is not

dispositive. Accordingly, we turn to whether the right claimed

here falls within the ambit of that broader State protection.

Contrary to plaintiffs' claim, we have never defined

one's right to choose among medical treatments, or to refuse

life-saving medical treatments, to include any broader "right to

die" or still broader right to obtain assistance from another to

end one's life. In Schloendorff v Society of New York Hospital,

we held that a surgeon who performed an operation without the

patient's consent committed an assault and, in that context, we

noted that "[e]very human being of adult years and sound mind has

a right to determine what shall be done with [such person's] own

body" (211 NY 125, 129–130 [1914]). Matter of Storar likewise

concerned the right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment

when the patients were not mentally competent (52 NY2d 363, 377

[1981]). In Rivers v Katz, holding that involuntarily committed

mental patients have a fundamental right to refuse antipsychotic

medication, we concluded that a patient's right "to refuse

medical treatment must be honored, even though the recommended

treatment may be beneficial or even necessary to preserve the

patient's life" (67 NY2d 485, 492 [1986]). 

We have consistently adopted the well-established

distinction between refusing life-sustaining treatment and

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assisted suicide (see Matter of Bezio v Dorsey, 21 NY3d 93, 103

[2013]; Matter of Fosmire v Nicoleau, 75 NY2d 218, 227 [1990];

Storar, 52 NY2d at 377 n 6). The right to refuse medical

intervention is at least partially rooted in notions of bodily

integrity, as the right to refuse treatment is a consequence of a

person's right to resist unwanted bodily invasions (see Cruzan v

Director, Mo. Dept. of Health, 497 US 261, 269-270 [1990];

Schloendorff, 211 NY at 130). In the case of the terminally ill,

refusing treatment involves declining life-sustaining techniques

that intervene to delay death. Aid-in-dying, by contrast,

involves a physician actively prescribing lethal drugs for the

purpose of directly causing the patient's death. As the Court

stated in Matter of Fosmire v Nicoleau, "[i]n many if not most

instances the State stays its hand and permits fully competent

adults to engage in conduct or make personal decisions which pose

risks to their lives or health," however, "[t]he State will

intervene to prevent suicide" (75 NY2d at 227). 

"[M]erely declining medical care, even essential

treatment, is not considered a suicidal act" (id.). Although we

do not reach the issue addressed by Judge Rivera's concurrence on

this appeal, the Supreme Court has noted that "the distinction

between assisting suicide and withdrawing life-sustaining

treatment, a distinction widely recognized and endorsed in the

medical profession and in our legal traditions, is both important

and logical; it is certainly rational," and it turns on

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"fundamental legal principles of causation and intent" (Vacco,

521 US at 801). As a general matter, the law has "long used

actors' intent or purpose to distinguish between two acts that

may have the same result" (id. at 802; see also Bezio, 21 NY3d at

103, quoting Von Holden v Chapman, 87 AD2d 66, 70 [4th Dept

1982]). 

The right asserted by plaintiffs is not fundamental,

and therefore the assisted suicide statutes need only be

rationally related to a legitimate government interest (see

People v Knox, 12 NY3d 60, 67 [2009]). "The rational basis test

is not a demanding one" (id. at 69); rather, it is "the most

relaxed and tolerant form of judicial scrutiny" (Dallas v

Stanglin, 490 US 19, 26 [1989]). Rational basis involves a

"strong presumption" that the challenged legislation is valid,

and "a party contending otherwise bears the heavy burden of

showing that a statute is so unrelated to the achievement of any

combination of legitimate purposes as to be irrational" (id. at

69). A challenged statute will survive rational basis review so

long as it is "rationally related to any conceivable legitimate

State purpose" (People v Walker, 81 NY2d 661, 668 [1993]

[citation omitted]). "Indeed, courts may even hypothesize the

Legislature's motivation or possible legitimate purpose"

(Affronti v Crosson, 95 NY2d 713, 719 [2001] [citation omitted]). 

At bottom, "[t]he rational basis standard is a paradigm of

judicial restraint" (id. [citation omitted]).

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As to the right asserted here, the State pursues a

legitimate purpose in guarding against the risks of mistake and

abuse. The State may rationally seek to prevent the distribution

of prescriptions for lethal dosages of drugs that could, upon

fulfillment, be deliberately or accidentally misused. The State

also has a significant interest in preserving life and preventing

suicide, a serious public health problem (see Bezio, 21 NY3d at

104; Storar, 52 NY2d at 377; see also Glucksberg, 521 US at 729). 

As summarized by the Supreme Court, the State's interests in

prohibiting assisted suicide include: "prohibiting intentional

killing and preserving life; preventing suicide; maintaining

physicians' role as their patients' healers; protecting

vulnerable people from indifference, prejudice, and psychological

and financial pressure to end their lives; and avoiding a

possible slide towards euthanasia" (Vacco, 521 US at 808-809). 

These legitimate and important State interests further "satisfy

the constitutional requirement that a legislative classification

bear a rational relation to some legitimate end" (id. at 809). 

These interests are long-standing. As the Supreme

Court observed, "[t]he earliest American statute explicitly to

outlaw assisting suicide was enacted in New York in 1828"

(Glucksberg, 521 US at 715 [citation omitted]). New York's Task

Force on Life and the Law, which was first convened in 1984,

carefully studied issues surrounding physician-assisted suicide

and "unanimously concluded that [l]egalizing assisted suicide and

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euthanasia would pose profound risks to many individuals who are

ill and vulnerable" and that the "potential danger[s] of this

dramatic change in public policy would outweigh any benefit that

might be achieved" (id. at 719 [citation omitted]). The

Legislature has periodically examined that ban -- including in

recent years -- and has repeatedly rejected attempts to legalize

physician-assisted suicide in New York. 

The Legislature may conclude that those dangers can be

effectively regulated and specify the conditions under which it

will permit aid-in-dying. Indeed, the jurisdictions that have

permitted the practice have done so only through considered

legislative action (see Or Rev Stat Ann §§ 127.800 - 127.897

[enacted in 1997]; Wash Rev Code §§ 70.245.010 - 70.245.904

[enacted in 2008]; 18 Vt Stat Ann ch 113 [enacted in 2013];

California End of Life Option Act, Cal. Health & Safety Code pt

1.85 [enacted in 2015]; Colorado Rev Stat §§ 25-48-101 -

25-48-123 [enacted in 2016]; D.C. Act 21-577 [enacted in 2016]),

and those courts to have considered this issue with respect to

their own State Constitutions have rejected similar

constitutional arguments (see Morris v Brandenburg,

2016-NMSC-027, 376 P3d 836, 843 [2016]; Sampson v State of

Alaska, 31 P3d 88 [Alaska 2001]; Krischer v McIver, 697 So 2d 97,

104 [Fla 1997]; People v Kevorkian, 447 Mich 436, 446, 527 NW2d

714, 717 [1994]; see also Donaldson v Lungren, 2 Cal App 4th

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1614, 1622, 4 Cal Rptr 2d 59, 63 [Cal Ct App 1992]).3 At

present, the Legislature of this State has permissibly concluded

that an absolute ban on assisted suicide is the most reliable,

effective, and administrable means of protecting against its

dangers (see Glucksberg, 521 US at 731-733).

V. CONCLUSION

Our Legislature has a rational basis for criminalizing

assisted suicide, and plaintiffs have no constitutional right to

the relief they seek herein. Accordingly, the order of the

Appellate Division should be affirmed, without costs. 

3 The Supreme Court of Montana has held that a statutory

consent defense protects physicians from prosecution for

physician-assisted suicide, but it did not reach the

constitutional question (see Baxter v State, 2009 MT 449, ¶ 50,

354 Mont 234, 251, 224 P3d 1211, 1222 [2009]).

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RIVERA, J.(concurring):

Our state and federal constitutions guarantee

heightened due process protections against unjustified government

interference with the liberty of all persons to make certain

deeply personal choices (NY Const, art I, § 6; US Const, 14th

Amend; see also Rivers v Katz, 67 NY2d 485, 492-493 [1986];

Obergefell v Hodges, 135 S Ct 2584, 2597 [2015]). This

conception of liberty is grounded in notions of individual

freedom, personal autonomy, dignity, and self-determination (see

Rivers, 67 NY2d at 493; Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v

Casey, 505 US 833, 857 [1992]; Lawrence v Texas, 539 US 558, 562

[2003] ["Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes

freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate

conduct."]; John P. Safranek, M.D. & Stephen J. Safranek, Can the

Right to Autonomy Be Resuscitated After Glucksberg?, 69 U Colo L

Rev 731, 733-742 [1998]).1 "At the heart of liberty is the right

1 There is a rich debate taking place over centuries

discussing the meaning of the term "dignity," and the

significance of the concept remains controversial today (see

generally Richard E. Ashcroft, Making Sense of Dignity, 31 J Med

Ethics 679 [2005]). As used here, the term is intended to evoke

an individual's freedom to pursue autonomously chosen goals as

well as an individual's need to be free from debasement and

humiliation, broadly conceived (id. at 681). 

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to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the

universe, and of the mystery of human life" (Casey, 505 US at

851). 

On this appeal, the plaintiffs essentially seek a

declaration that mentally competent, terminally-ill patients have

an unrestricted State constitutional right to physicianprescribed medications that hasten death. I concur with the

Court that this broad right as defined by plaintiffs is not

guaranteed under the New York State Constitution, and that the

State has compelling and legitimate interests in prohibiting

unlimited and unconditional access to physician-assisted

suicide.2 These interests, however, are not absolute or

unconditional. In particular, the State's interests in

protecting and promoting life diminish when a mentally-competent,

terminally-ill person approaches the final stage of the dying

process that is agonizingly painful and debilitating. In such a

situation, the State cannot prevent the inevitable, and its

interests do not outweigh either the individual's right to selfdetermination or the freedom to choose a death that comports with

the individual's values and sense of dignity. Given that the

State already permits a physician to take affirmative steps to

2 I agree with the Court's analysis that what plaintiffs

call "aid-in-dying" is assisted-suicide within the meaning of our

criminal law (per curiam at 5-7), and that the plaintiffs' equal

protection claim is without merit (id. at 7-8). I address only

the rights of the terminally ill under the State Due Process

Clause.

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comply with a patient's request to hasten death, and that the

State concedes that the Legislature could permit the practice

sought by plaintiffs, the State's interests lack constitutional

force for this specific sub-group of patients. Considering the

State's sanctioning of terminal sedation in particular, the

statute does not survive rational basis review. Therefore, in my

view, the State may not unduly burden a terminally-ill patient's

access to physician-prescribed medication that allows the patient

in the last painful stage of life to achieve a peaceful death as

the end draws near.3

I.

"Death will be different for each of us. For many, the

last days will be spent in physical pain and perhaps the despair

that accompanies physical deterioration and a loss of control of

basic bodily and mental functions. Some will seek medication to

alleviate that pain and other symptoms" (Washington v Glucksberg,

521 US 702, 736 [1997] [O'Connor, J. concurring]). Justice

O'Connor's poignant description of the end of life is familiar to

plaintiffs, who included, at the time the complaint was filed,

three mentally competent, terminally-ill adults. These patient3 Lest my intention be misconstrued, I do not write to

expound on plaintiffs' State due process rights as limited by

their complaint, but rather to address the State's position that

its interests outweigh the rights of all terminally-ill patients

regardless of their condition. 

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plaintiffs expressed a desire for more than pain management; they

sought to maintain a sense of dignity, autonomy, and personal

integrity in the face of death, which they claimed had been

compromised by both their respective illnesses and by the State's

prohibition on assisted suicide. They requested judicial

recognition of a right to decide how and when to die by accessing

medication that would permit each of them to put an immediate end

to their respective suffering.

Two of these patient-plaintiffs have since passed. 

When the complaint was filed, one plaintiff was 62 years old and

suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, a neurodegenerative condition

without a cure. As the disease took hold, she was in constant

pain and "fe[lt] trapped in a torture chamber of her own

deteriorating body," fully aware of all that was transpiring to

her physically and, worse yet, that the agonizing pain would

persist for the rest of her days. She sought relief in the form

of prescription medications that she could ingest "to achieve a

peaceful death."

The other deceased patient-plaintiff was 57 years old

and terminally ill with acquired immune deficiency syndrome

(AIDS). A regimen of several medications kept him alive. He

suffered from a variety of ailments and, as a consequence, had

part of his foot amputated. He developed laryngeal carcinoma,

which necessitated a tracheotomy that made it difficult for him

to speak. He took more than 24 medications either through his

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feeding tube or by injection, and required morphine for pain

management. He slept 19 hours a day and spent most of his five

waking hours cleaning and maintaining his feeding and oxygen

tubes, and taking his daily medications and injections. 

According to the complaint, he "wishe[d] to have the comfort of

knowing that, if and when his suffering [became] unbearable, he

[could] ingest medications prescribed by his doctor to achieve a

peaceful death."

The surviving patient-plaintiff is in his eighties. He

developed cancer and, after surgery to remove his bladder,

suffered a recurrence but is now in remission. The complaint

states that he wants "to be sure that if the cancer progresses to

a terminal state, and he finds himself in a dying process he

determines to be unbearable, he has available to him the option

of aid-in-dying."

These patient-plaintiffs, joined by a group of

physicians practicing end-of-life care and the non-profit End of

Life Choices New York, challenge the application of New York's

Penal Law to physicians who are willing to provide mentally

competent, terminally-ill patients, like the named patientplaintiffs, with a prescription for medication that they could

ingest to end their lives before they succumb to the ravages of

their illnesses. These providers maintain that aid-in-dying is a

medically and ethically appropriate treatment that should be

legally available to patients. They are supported by several

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amici, including professional organizations such as the American

Medical Student Association, American Medical Women's

Association, American College of Legal Medicine, National Academy

of Elder Law Attorneys, and amici representing several surviving

family members who have witnessed the death of a loved one, and

who describe the emotional impact and stress endured by the

family caregivers.

The stories retold by patient-plaintiffs and amici

family survivors describe the painful and harrowing experiences

many terminally-ill patients endure in the final stage of life. 

The dying process, candidly recounted, illustrates the struggle

of the terminally ill to live and die on their own terms, and is

a vivid reminder of the fragility of human existence. It also

provides necessary context for the legal analysis.

II.

Constitutional limits on governmental interference with

individual liberty have long included protection of the

fundamental right to bodily integrity (Rivers, 67 NY2d at 492;

Matter of Bezio v Dorsey, 21 NY3d 93, 119 [2013]; Glucksberg, 521

US at 720; Vacco v Quill, 521 US 793, 807 [1997]). Courts have

recognized that decisions about what may or may not be done to

one's body are "central to personal dignity and autonomy" and so

are subject to heightened scrutiny (Casey, 505 US at 851; Cruzan

v Dir., Missouri Dep't of Health, 497 US 261, 278 [1990]). While

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we have not defined its outer limit, "[t]his Court has repeatedly

construed the State Constitution's Due Process Clause to provide

greater protection than its federal counterpart as construed by

the Supreme Court" (People v LaValle, 3 NY3d 88, 127 [2004]; see

also People v Scott, 79 NY2d 474, 496 [1992]). 

Patients in New York State unquestionably have certain

fundamental rights regarding medical treatment. In Rivers v

Katz, this Court stated that "[i]t is a firmly established

principle of the common law of New York that every individual of

adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be

done with his own body" (67 NY2d at 492). The Court continued, 

"[i]n our system of a free government, where

notions of individual autonomy and free

choice are cherished, it is the individual

who must have the final say in respect to

decisions regarding [his or her] medical

treatment in order to insure that the

greatest possible protection is accorded [his

or her] autonomy and freedom from unwanted

interference with the furtherance of [his or

her] own desires" (id. at 493). 

A few years later, this Court noted that "the State rarely acts

to protect individuals from themselves, indicating that the

State's interest is less substantial when there is little or no

risk of direct injury to the public. This is consistent with the

primary function of the State to preserve and promote liberty and

the personal autonomy of the individual" (Matter of Fosmire v

Nicoleau, 75 NY2d 218, 227 [1990]). As such, the "fundamental

common-law right [of refusing medical treatment] is coextensive

with the patient's liberty interest protected by the due process

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clause of our State Constitution" (Rivers, 67 NY2d at 493). 

While this language may seem to countenance aid-indying, there are important caveats. First, the right to refuse

medical treatment, while fundamental, "is not absolute and in

some circumstances may have to yield to superior interests of the

State" (Fosmire, 75 NY2d at 226). If a challenged statute

infringes on a fundamental right, "it must withstand strict

scrutiny and is void unless necessary to promote a compelling

State interest and narrowly tailored to achieve that purpose"

(Golden v Clark, 76 NY2d 618, 623 [1990]). It is for the courts

"to weigh the interest of the individual against the interests

asserted on behalf of the State to strike an appropriate balance"

(Fosmire, 75 NY2d at 226-227). Second, the Court has, as the per

curiam makes clear, consistently distinguished between refusing

life-sustaining or life-saving medical treatment and assisting

suicide (see Bezio, 21 NY3d at 103; Fosmire, 75 NY2d at 227;

Matter of Storar, 52 NY2d 363, 377 n 6 [1981]; per curiam at 9-

11). Across these cases the Court has held that an individual

has a fundamental right to refuse medical treatment but,

implicitly, not to physician-assisted suicide.

Even though this Court's precedent establishes that the

right to control medical treatment generally does not extend to

assisted suicide, because the criminal statutes challenged on

this appeal effect a curtailment of patients' liberty, the

State's prohibition must still be rationally related to a

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legitimate government interest (People v Knox, 12 NY3d 60, 67

[2009]). The Court here highlights how the State's legitimate

interest in protecting life has led it to make a rational

distinction between permitting a patient to refuse lifesustaining medical treatment and a ban on assisted suicide (per

curiam at 12-13; see e.g. Bezio, 21 NY3d at 103). This interest

extends to protecting the lives of the terminally ill, as does

the rational link between this interest and prohibiting assisted

suicide. There are several bases on which the State may justify

prohibiting physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill in

most cases: a terminal diagnosis may be incorrect, or at least

underestimate the time a patient has left; palliative care can

often reduce a patient's will to die, whether caused by physical

pain or depression, and thus prolong life; vulnerable,

terminally-ill patients could face external influences

encouraging them to hasten their deaths, such as familial or

financial pressure; the fear of opening the door to voluntary and

involuntary euthanasia; and, finally, the possible negative

impact on the integrity and ethics of the medical profession.

I agree, on constraint of this prior case law, that the

right of a patient to determine the course of medical treatment

does not, in general, encompass an unrestricted right to assisted

suicide, and the State's prohibition of this practice in the vast

majority of situations is rationally related to its legitimate

interests. Nevertheless, this conclusion does not support the

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State's position that its interests are always superior to and

outweigh the rights of the terminally ill. In particular, when

these patients are facing an impending painful death, their own

interest may predominate. For the reasons I discuss, in those

limited circumstances in which a patient seeks access to medical

treatment options that end pain and hasten death, with the

consent of a treating physician acting on best professional

judgment, the State's interest is diminished and outweighed by

the patient's liberty interest in personal autonomy.

III.

The liberty interest protected by our State

Constitution is broader than the right to decline medical

treatment. At its core, liberty is the right to define oneself

through deeply personal choices that form a lifetime of human

experience (Casey, 505 US at 851; Rivers, 67 NY2d at 493). As we

have stated "to preserve and promote liberty and the personal

autonomy of the individual" is "the primary function of the

State" (Fosmire, 75 NY2d at 227). 

An individual's interests in autonomy and freedom are

not less substantial when facing the choice of how to bear the

suffering and physical pain of a terminal illness at the end of

life. Self-determination includes the freedom to make decisions

about how to die just as surely as it includes decision making

about life's most private matters -- e.g. sexuality, marriage,

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procreation, and child rearing -- all choices that reflect

personal beliefs and desires (see e.g. Lawrence, 539 US at 567;

Brooke S.B. v Elizabeth A.C.C., 28 NY3d 1, 26 [2016]). As the

United States Supreme Court has recognized, "[t]he choice between

life and death is a deeply personal decision of obvious and

overwhelming finality" Cruzan, 497 US at 281). 

For the terminally ill patient who is experiencing

intractable pain and suffering that cannot be adequately

alleviated by palliative care, plaintiffs and amici affirm that

the ability to control the end stage of the dying process and

achieve a peaceful death may lead to a renewed sense of autonomy

and freedom.4 So while the State's interest in protecting life

is paramount, the law requires that we balance that interest

against those of an individual facing an imminent and unbearably

painful death. Contrary to the State's argument, the

government's interest in protecting life diminishes as death

draws near, as that interest "does not have the same force for a

terminally ill patient faced not with the choice of whether to

4 It is worth noting that in her Glucksberg concurrence,

Justice O'Connor was operating on the assumption that all dying

patients in Washington and New York could obtain palliative care

that would relieve their suffering. As a result, she did not

reach the narrower question of "whether a mentally competent

person who is experiencing great suffering has a constitutionally

cognizable interest in controlling the circumstances of his or

her imminent death" (Glucksberg, 521 US at 737-738 [O'Connor, J.

concurring]). As plaintiffs and amici allege, and as medical

science indicates, palliative care is not always an option for a

terminally ill patient in severe pain approaching death.

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live, only of how to die" (Glucksberg, 521 US at 746 [1997]

[Stevens, J. concurring]; see also Wilkinson v Skinner, 34 NY2d

53, 58 [1974] ["The requirements of due process are not static;

they vary with the elements of the ambience in which they

arise."]). In such cases, patients have "a constitutionally

cognizable interest in obtaining relief from the suffering that

they may experience in the last days of their lives" that

outweighs the State's interest in essentially prolonging the

agony (Glucksberg, 521 US at 737).

Certainly, the State may "stay its hand" by doing

nothing to assist a terminally ill patient, thus letting the

dying process take its natural course (Fosmire, 75 NY2d at 227). 

However, this is not the approach chosen by the State of New

York. The reality is that the State already permits a patient to

choose medical measures that hasten death in ways that require

active, deliberate assistance of a physician. These measures are

not passive. For example, the State permits the turning off of

ventilators, the removal of breathing tubes, and the removal of

intravenous life-sustaining nourishment and medications, even

when the physician and patient know this will lead rapidly to

certain death. As such, the State currently allows a physician,

with a patient or a guardian's informed consent, and in the

exercise of the physician's professional judgment, to

affirmatively assist in bringing about a terminally-ill patient's

death (see Pub Health Law §§ 2994-e [1]; 2994-f [1]).

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These processes are widely considered appropriate and

humane end-of-life treatments that recognize the dignity of the

individual patient. The justifications for allowing a physician

to take active steps to precipitate a patient's death were

powerfully noted in 2010, in the context of changes to the Public

Health Law that now allows guardians of mentally-incompetent

patients to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatments. 

Supporters of the bill wrote that, 

"[l]ost in the gaps of existing law, many

families have witnessed what they knew to be

the ardent desires of their incapacitated

loved ones go unfulfilled for weeks and

months, while every participant -- from the

patient, to family members, to the

professionals providing care -- has

anguished. At the same time, families have

been frozen by the lack of legal means to

honor the deeply personal wishes of their

loved ones" (Letter from Healthcare

Association of New York State, Bill Jacket,

2010, AB 7729, ch 8).

The Assembly Memorandum in Support described the legislation as

necessary because mentally-incompetent patients "may linger,

through unnecessary medical intervention, in a state of

irrevocable anguish," and "are, as a class, uniquely disqualified

from health care rights essential to the humane and dignified

treatment to which every other citizen is entitled" (2001 NY

Assembly Bill A08466D). 

Plaintiffs and amici Surviving Family Members similarly

describe how terminally-ill patients, deprived of a legal path to

bring about a death in line with their wishes, suffer

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excruciatingly through the final moments of their lives as their

loved ones and caregivers watch helplessly. The complaint,

plaintiffs' affidavits, and amici briefs are filled with accounts

of patients who would have chosen aid-in-dying if the option were

available. One account describes an elderly man whose bones were

so riddled with cancer they would spontaneously break, even when

he was lying in bed without bearing weight. Despite receiving

opioids and other medications around the clock, he found his pain

and suffering unbearable. He wanted to know his options for a

peaceful death and the only option the physician was able to

offer was for him to voluntarily stop eating and drinking. 

Another describes a man suffering from a degenerative motor

neuron disease who, eight years after diagnosis, was wheelchair

bound, had lost control of his bladder and bowels, as well as the

ability to cough up food caught in his lungs, experienced his

limbs atrophy, and "everything which he had previously identified

as degrading about dying." Ultimately he too chose to stop

eating and drinking. He remained conscious during the 12 days

that followed until his death, at one point developing terminal

agitation that caused "sudden uncontrollable fits of yelling and

violent thrashing" that led to him being strapped to his bed.

The State argues a dichotomy between active and passive

physician conduct differentiates aid-in-dying from other

sanctioned end-of-life treatments. This binary is unpersuasive

in this context. First, it does not conform with the experience

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of all physicians (TE Quill, et al., Palliative Options of Last

Resort, 278(23) JAMA 2099, 2102 [Dec 17, 1997] ["[T]here is

nothing psychologically or physically passive about taking

someone off a mechanical ventilator who is incapable of breathing

on his or her own."). Second, the withdrawal of nourishment is

anything but passive, as patients without an underlying disease

die if they are prevented from eating and drinking. Third, and

in contrast, the physician's role in aid-in-dying is "passive" in

a practical sense, for it is the patient who administers the

lethal medication, often spatially and temporally distant from

the moment the physician provided the prescription (id.). In some

cases, the patient never ingests the dosage.5

Apart from the fact that the State permits these

non-passive actions to hasten death for the terminally ill, the

5 Not all physicians who prescribe a patient a lethal dosage

necessarily know for certain that the patient will die from

taking the prescription, as many patients prescribed these drugs

do not ultimately take them. Many patients simply want to regain

a modicum of control over the dying process (see Glucksberg, 521

US at 751 n 15 [Stevens, J. concurring]). The ranges vary from

state to state. In California, under the End of Life Option Act,

173 physicians prescribed 191 individuals lethal medication

between June 9, 2016, and December 31, 2016. Of the 191

prescribed patients, 111 (58.1%) were reported by their physician

to have died following ingestion of lethal medication and 21

(11.0%) died without ingestion of the prescribed drugs. The

outcome of the remaining 59 (30.9%) individuals was undetermined

at the time of the report (California Department of Public

Health, California End of Life Option Act 2016 Data Report [2016]

at 3, available at:

https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CHSI/CDPH%20Document%20Library/C

DPH%20End%20of%20Life%20Option%20Act%20Report.pdf [accessed

August 29, 2017]).

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State's interest in prohibiting aid-in-dying for this particular

sub-group of patients is further weakened by its sanctioning of

terminal sedation. This end-of-life treatment consists of the

intravenous administration of sedatives and pain medication,

often coupled with the withholding of nutrition and hydration, to

a terminally-ill patient (J M van Delden, Terminal Sedation:

Source of a Restless Ethical Debate, 33(4) J Med Ethics 187, 187

[2007]). In 2003, the American Medical Association issued a

policy statement supporting the practice, which it calls

"palliative sedation to unconsciousness," as "an intervention of

last resort to reduce severe, refractory pain or other

distressing clinical symptoms that do not respond to aggressive

symptom-specific palliation" (see The AMA Code of Medical Ethics'

Opinions on Sedation at the End of Life, 15(5) Virtual Mentor

428-429 [May 2013]).6

For this sub-group of terminally ill patients, the

State recognizes this as a lawful means to end life.7 As in

6 The statement recommends ethical guidelines for physicians

using the practice, such as only using it for patients in the

final stage of a terminal illness when their symptoms have been

unresponsive to aggressive treatment, and stresses that it is not

appropriate when the patient's suffering is primarily existential

(AMA Code at 429). These guidelines are not dissimilar from

those codified in aid-in-dying statutes across the country (see

Or Rev Stat Ann §§ 127.800 - 127.897 [enacted in 1997]), and in

the bill currently before the legislature (Proposed Medical Aid

in Dying Act, NY Assembly Bill A02383 [Jan 19, 2017]).

7 Determining whether terminal sedation is appropriate is a

decision for physicians and patients (see AMA Code of Medical

Ethics' Opinions on Sedation at the End of Life at 428).

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Glucksberg, the "parties and amici agree that . . . a patient who

is suffering from a terminal illness and who is experiencing

great pain has no legal barriers to obtaining medication, from

qualified physicians, to alleviate that suffering, even to the

point of causing unconsciousness and hastening death"

(Glucksberg, 521 US at 736-37 [O'Connor, J. concurring]). The

difference between injecting a drug that sedates a patient while

simultaneously quickening death and prescribing lethal medication

is not meaningful in the constitutional sense. Regardless of the

method, the purpose of the physician's act and the patient's goal

in both situations is to expedite the dying process and avoid the

severe pain, suffering, and indignity associated with the last

stage of a terminal illness. In these cases, a patient's

"interest in refusing medical care is incidental to [the

patient's] more basic interest in controlling the manner and

timing of her death" (Glucksberg, 521 US at 742 [1997] [Stevens,

J. concurring]). Moreover, by sanctioning a patient's right to

refuse medical treatment, which leads to certain death, this

Court has, like the United States Supreme Court, "in essence,

authorized affirmative conduct that would hasten [a patient's]

death" (id. at 743).

The State and my colleagues rely on an analysis of

physician intent to differentiate aid-in-dying from terminal

sedation and the withholding or withdrawal of life-saving

treatment (per curiam at 10-11; J. Fahey concurring op at 4; J.

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Garcia concurring op at 6). The argument presumes that

physicians who adopt aid-in-dying intend to cause the patient's

death, while physicians who perform these other treatments intend

solely to alleviate the patient's pain, and death is merely a

potential unintended consequence. My colleagues quote Vacco v

Quill for the proposition that the law "has long used actors'

intent or purpose to distinguish between two acts that may have

the same result" (521 US 793, 802 [1997]; per curiam at 11; J.

Fahey concurring op at 4; J. Garcia concurring op at 5). This is

irrelevant, because in every case involving individual liberty,

the constitutional question turns on the nature and expanse of

the patient's right to autonomy and bodily integrity as weighed

against the State's interest, not the intent of a third party who

assists the patient in receiving the proper medical treatment

(Rivers, 67 NY2d at 498).8 Besides, we do not defer to federal

analysis when we construe our broader state constitutional due

process clause (LaValle, 3 NY3d at 127).

Moreover, this intent-based analysis fails even on its

own terms. Simply put, it is impossible, as a practical matter,

to distinguish between these various end-of-life practices based

8 Due to the conceptual murkiness of determining whether a

physician's act is active or passive, and whether death is

intended or merely foreseen by a physician, some experts on

palliative care advise that considerations of "the patient's

wishes and competent consent are more ethically important [than

these concerns about the physicians's mindset]" (Quill,

Palliative Options of Last Resort, at 2102).

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on a third party's state of mind. When a physician removes a

patient from a life-sustaining apparatus, or declines to

administer life-saving procedures, the physician's intent, in

accord with the wishes of the patient, is to precipitate the

death of the patient. A physician who complies with a patient's

constitutionally protected choice to forego life-sustaining

treatment knows that when a ventilator is withdrawn, for example,

the patient will soon die.9 To argue otherwise is to ignore the

reality of the physician's actions and the patient's wishes.

Even the primary distinction cited by the State and my

colleagues does not hold in all cases because, as the State

concedes, the drugs involved in terminal sedation are known to

cause a patient's death in certain cases. A physician providing

this medical option knows very well about the potential immediate

consequence and must forewarn the patient (see AMA Code of

Medical Ethics' Opinions on Sedation at the End of Life at 428).

Furthermore, while sedation may be necessary to alleviate a

patient's pain, the withdrawal of nourishment, which forms part

of the treatment, can only serve to bring about death (see David

Orentlicher, The Supreme Court and Terminal Sedation: Rejecting

Assisted Suicide, Embracing Euthanasia, 24 Hastings Const L Q

9 Arguably, at least as long as the patient remains

conscious, it may be possible for a patient who has asked for a

ventilator or nourishment to be withdrawn to change course and

decide to resume life-sustaining treatment. Terminal sedation,

however, initiates a process whereby the patient cannot object

once sedated and inevitably ends in the patient's death.

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947, 957 [Summer 1997]). Resolution of the constitutional

question requires consideration of the patient's rights; not a

speculative exploration of the physician's intent. 

Terminal sedation is intended to initiate what must be

described for what it is: a slow-acting lethal process. While

it may fall under the umbrella of palliative care (see

Glucksberg, 521 US at 737-738 [O'Connor, J. concurring]),

terminal sedation is not solely a method of pain management but

is instead a procedure that hastens the inevitable death of the

patient. It places the patient in a condition where choosing to

struggle against death is no longer possible. It facilitates the

patient's choice to end life.

If terminally-ill patients may exercise their liberty

interest by choosing to be terminally sedated, the State has no

compelling rationale, or even a rational interest, in refusing a

mentally-competent, terminally-ill patient who is in the final

stage of life the choice of a less intrusive option -- access to

aid-in-dying -- which may better comport with the patient's

autonomy and dignity. It is also an option which lessens the

time patients and their families are forced to wait for the

inevitable -- often by no more than days and possibly much less. 

IV.

Concerns about allowing aid-in-dying for the sub-group

I have identified are misplaced. Consider, first, the State's

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interest in preserving life. Admittedly, the State has

compelling interests that justify prohibiting assisted suicide as

a general matter, but those interests are diminished and do not

outweigh the individual's liberty interest in the case of a

competent terminally-ill patient in the final stage of life, with

no cure or recourse other than inadequate pain management, facing

a death the patient feels is bereft of dignity. As the State's

own policies regarding terminal sedation attest, it has accepted

that its interest in preserving life should cede to the rights of

a patient in this condition. Acknowledgment of the individual's

right to decide when and how to end life in the limited

situations I have discussed does not undermine the sacredness of

life or devalue the patient any more than terminal sedation does. 

Instead, by honoring a patient's wishes, the State recognizes the

individual's right to full autonomy and to make a choice that

reflects deeply held beliefs about life and death.

Nor does the State's general interest in preventing

suicide and avoiding misdiagnosis outweigh the liberty interests

in aid-in dying for mentally-competent, terminally-ill patients

facing imminent, agonizing death. The State's interests for this

group of patients are not comparable to cases involving persons

without terminal illnesses who are able to manage their illness

and its debilitating effects, or those who for any number of

personal reasons do not want to hasten death with a lethal

prescription. There is no possibility of an erroneous terminal

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diagnosis for these patients as aid-in-dying would only be

available in the last stage of life, when the end is imminent and

certain. The fear that allowing aid-in-dying will result in

patient coercion or be the first step to government-sanctioned

euthanasia is as misplaced as the notion that terminal sedation

inevitably leads to government-sanctioned euthanasia.10

Permitting these patients to choose whether to experience the

short time that remains under conditions some may find unbearable

is a recognition of the importance of individual autonomy and the

limits of the State's ability to interfere with a patient's most

intimate personal decisions (Rivers, 67 NY2d at 492-493;

Obergefell, 135 S Ct at 2597). 

The State's argument that aid-in-dying would make it

10 The prediction that sanctioning aid-in-dying would put

New York State on a slippery slope toward legalizing nonvoluntary euthanasia is far from certain. Studies of two decades

of euthanasia in the Netherlands "show no evidence of a slippery

slope [leading to non-voluntary euthanasia]. . . . Also, there

is no evidence for a higher frequency of euthanasia among the

elderly, people with low educational status, the poor, the

physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with

psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic

minorities, compared with background populations" (JA Rietjens,

et al., Two Decades of Research on Euthanasia from the

Netherlands. What Have We Learnt and What Questions Remain?, 6(3)

J Bioeth Inq 271 [2009], at

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2733179/ [accessed

August 29, 2017]; see also MP Battin, et al., Legal

physician-assisted dying in Oregon and the Netherlands: evidence

concerning the impact on patients in “vulnerable” groups, 33(10)

J Med Ethics 591 [2007]). This finding is mirrored in the data

from Oregon, which shows no evidence of heightened risk in any of

the above categories (id.).

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more difficult to ensure adequate medical treatment for those

with untreated pain and depression is a valid interest in support

of the State's prohibition on physician-assisted suicide as a

general matter. However, it does not outweigh the interests of

the terminally ill for whom pain treatment is inadequate and

whose choice is not motivated by depression and helplessness, but

by the desire to exercise autonomy to achieve a peaceful death,

one that honors individuality and dignity (see Glucksberg, 521 US

at 746-74 [1997] [Stevens, J. concurring]). Nor can it be said

to be rational when the State already permits terminal sedation.

The State's other argument, that aid-in-dying

undermines the integrity and ethics of the medical profession as

it is incompatible with the physician's role as a healer,11 is

not uniformly accepted and is contradicted by the experiences of

some medical professionals.12 The plaintiff11 The State does not adopt Judge Garcia's argument that the

opinion of some medical professionals alone is enough for this

statute to survive rational basis scrutiny as applied to this

sub-group (J. Garcia concurring op at 15). And with good reason:

such a low threshold risks rendering our rational basis test

meaningless.

12 For example, the New York State Academy of Family

Physicians, representing over six thousand physicians and medical

students, recently decided to support aid-in-dying ("Physician's

group endorses medical aid-in-dying legislation," The Legislative

Gazette [June 25, 2017], available at:

http://legislativegazette.com/physicians-group-endorses-medical-a

id-in-dying/ [accessed August 29, 2017]). Also, this year the

Medical Society of the State of New York decided to conduct a

survey of physicians in the State to determine their attitudes

towards aid-in-dying, citing public support and changes in the

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physicians who treat the terminally ill and amici representing

the American Medical Student Association, American Medical

Women's Association, and American College of Legal Medicine,

describe how inhibiting a physician's exercise of best

professional judgment when counseling a patient about end-of-life

choices undermines the doctor-patient relationship. Indeed, aidin-dying is openly practiced in various parts of the country

without having compromised the profession.13 Several amici point

out that in those states where aid-in-dying is lawful -- Oregon,

Washington, Vermont and California14 -- the physician standard of

care is governed by statutes and professional guidelines that

law elsewhere (see "New York's medical society will survey

doctors on attitudes towards physician assisted dying," WXXI News

[April 24, 2017], available at:

http://wxxinews.org/post/new-york-s-medical-society-will-survey-d

octors-attitudes-toward-physician-assisted-dying [accessed August

29, 2017]). This included a survey commissioned by Compassion &

Choices, a non-profit organization focusing on end-of-life care,

which indicates that 77 percent of New Yorkers support access to

aid-in-dying (Compassion & Choices, New York 2015-16 Research

Report, available at:

https://www.compassionandchoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/2

NY-POLL-INFO.pdf [accessed August 29, 2017]).

13 Notably, a 2003 survey of doctors and nurses published by

the Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that

aid-in-dying was being practiced clandestinely throughout the

country (see Diane E. Meier, MD et al, Characteristics of

Patients Requesting and Receiving Physician-Assisted Death,

163(13) Arch Intern Med 1537 [2003], available at:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle

/215798 [accessed August 29, 2017]). 

14 Colorado has recently adopted a ballot measure permitting

aid-in-dying (Colo End of Life Options Act, Prop 106 [2016]). 

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have ensured the quality and careful application of this end of

life treatment.15 By all measures, the State fails to address

that the "time-honored line between healing and harming" does not

provide much guidance for practices like terminal sedation or

aid-in-dying (Glucksberg, 521 US at 731 [citations and quotation

15 The decisions from other states cited by the Court to

demonstrate that assisted suicide has nowhere yet been deemed a

fundamental right by a high court in the United States do not

affect the analysis, as plaintiffs rely on the guarantees

afforded by the New York State Constitution and our Court's broad

interpretation of the state Due Process Clause. To the extent

some of the cases cited by the per curiam analyze their own state

constitutions in a manner similar to that employed by the per

curiam here (per curiam at 13-14), I note that not all are based

on their respective state's due process clause (see People v

Kevorkian, 447 Mich 436, 538, 527 NW2d 714, 758 [Mich 1994]). 

Further, the analysis is not uniform across these cases. For

example, in Morris v Brandenburg (2016-NMSC-027, 376 P3d 836, 841

[NM 2016]), the most recent case cited by the per curiam, the

Supreme Court of New Mexico reversed the trial court, which had

found a statute that prohibited aid-in-dying violated the New

Mexico State Constitution's guarantee to protect life, liberty,

and happiness. However, in that case, the State conceded that it

did not "have an interest in preserving a painful and

debilitating life that will end imminently." The court found

that the State had, instead, a legitimate interest in providing

protections to ensure that decisions regarding aid-in-dying are

informed, independent, and procedurally safe (id. at 855). The

court ultimately determined that the right to aid-in-dying is

best defined by the legislature, which is better equipped to

develop appropriate safeguards than the judiciary (points also

made by the courts in the Florida and Alaska cases [Krischer v

McIver, 697 So 2d 97, 104 (Fla 1997); Sampson v State of Alaska,

31 P3d 88,98 (Alaska 2001)]). A dissenting judge in the Michigan

case also argued that the State's interest in the preservation of

life dwindles as a terminally-ill patient suffering great pain

seeks to hasten death through physician-prescribed medications

(Kevorkian, 447 Mich at 538 [Mallett, J., dissenting]). Thus, to

the extent these cases may be instructive, they reveal that the

constitutional analysis of aid-in-dying is specific to each

state's constitutional jurisprudence and interests.

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marks omitted]). For this sub-group of patients, healing, as

understood as a restoration of bodily health, is no longer a

possibility. 

In addition to the interests asserted by the State, my

colleagues "hypothesize" an additional concern in avoiding misuse

of a patient's dosage (per curiam at 11-12). Yet, the risk of

the drugs involved in aid-in-dying being "deliberately or

accidentally misused" is no more than with any other drug with

the potential to cause severe injury or death that a physician

may legally prescribe (see Office of the New York State

Comptroller, Prescription Opioid Abuse and Heroin Addiction in

New York State [June 2016], available at

https://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/june16/heroin_and_opio

ids.pdf [accessed August 29, 2017]). At most, this simply shows

that the State may regulate this area, as other states have

done.16

V.

"It is the province of the Judicial branch to define,

and safeguard, rights provided by the New York State

Constitution, and order redress for violation of them" (Campaign

16 Although the State's authority to regulate the exercise

of a terminally-ill patient's access to aid-in-dying medications

is not directly presented in this appeal, some regulation of this

medical treatment option would fall within the State's power over

public health matters (see Viemeister v White, 179 NY 235, 238

[1904]).

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for Fiscal Equity, Inc. v State, 100 NY2d 893, 925 [2003]). 

Although a liberty interest is at stake here, the Court implies

and Judge Garcia argues that this question is best addressed by

the Legislature (per curiam at 13; J. Garcia concurring op at

17). "The Court, however, plays a crucial and necessary function

in our system of checks and balances. It is the responsibility

of the judiciary to safeguard the rights afforded under our State

Constitution" (People v LaValle, 3 NY3d 88, 128 [2004]). We may

not abdicate that role to any other branch of government

(Campaign for Fiscal Equity, 100 NY2d at 925).

Mentally-competent, terminally-ill patients, with no

cure or recourse other than inadequate pain management or

palliative sedation to unconsciousness, and who face certain,

imminent, excruciating death, are situated quantitatively and

qualitatively differently from other individuals, even others

living with terminal illnesses. State interests that animate the

prohibition on physician aid-in-dying for these patients are

diminished as death draws near and ultimately are outweighed by

these patients' liberty interest and extant rights to selfdetermination and bodily integrity. The compelling state

interests that bar physician assisted suicide in general are not,

for this group, dispositive. When the State already permits

physicians to instigate other processes that precipitate death,

there is no compelling basis for depriving such patients of an

option that can better comport with their sense of dignity,

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control, and independence. Our State Constitution protects the

rights of these terminally-ill patients to make the deeply

personal choice of how they define and experience their final

moments.

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Sara Myers v Schneiderman 

No. 77

FAHEY, J. (concurring):

Experience teaches us that arguably benign policies can

lead to unanticipated results. I write separately to expand on

certain risks that would be associated with legalizing physicianassisted suicide in New York and that justify its prohibition.

I.

Several significant rationales exist for criminalizing

physician-assisted suicide, each of which would constitute a

legitimate legislative purpose for the statute challenged here. 

The per curiam opinion, which I join, outlines many of these

legitimate government interests (see per curiam op at 12; see

also Washington v Glucksberg, 521 US 702, 728-735 [1997] [holding

that Washington State's then-ban on assisted suicide did not

violate substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment of

the Federal Constitution]). 

I focus on two, closely related rationales. First, the

Legislature may reasonably criminalize assisted suicide because

to permit the practice would open the door to voluntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia. To use the familiar metaphor, it would

place New York on a slippery slope toward legalizing nonvoluntary euthanasia. Second, the Legislature may reasonably

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criminalize physician-assisted suicide because a right to

assisted suicide by the terminally ill in circumscribed lastresort situations would inevitably expand to include persons who

are not terminally ill.

I begin by discussing matters of terminology in regard

to physician-assisted dying and the legal landscape in the United

States. Physician-assisted suicide, the topic of this appeal,

differs conceptually from euthanasia. In euthanasia, a physician

brings about the death of a patient, whereas, in physicianassisted suicide, it is the patient who kills himself or herself,

with the assistance of a physician. The common thread, more

significant than the conceptual difference, is the use of a

lethal dosage of medication intended to end the patient's life.

In the United States, physician-assisted suicide has

been legalized and is regulated in Oregon (see Or Rev Stat Ann §§

127.800 - 127.897 [enacted in 1997]); Washington (see Wash Rev

Code §§ 70.245.010 - 70.245.904 [enacted in 2008]); Vermont (see

18 Vt Stat Ann ch 113 [enacted in 2013]); California (see End of

Life Option Act, Cal. Health & Safety Code pt 1.85 [enacted in

2015]); Colorado (see Rev Stat §§ 25-48-101 - 25-48-123 [enacted

in 2016]); and the District of Columbia (see D.C. Act 21-577

[enacted in 2016]). Each of these jurisdictions expressly

permits physician-assisted suicide by statute,1 and in each one

1 In Montana, a terminally ill patient's consent to

physician-assisted suicide constitutes a defense to a charge of

homicide under a state criminal statute, as interpreted by the

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physician-assisted suicide is limited to mentally competent

patients, 18 years of age or older, who have been diagnosed with

a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months.

By contrast, euthanasia is legal in no jurisdiction in

the United States. Here, "euthanasia" refers to active

euthanasia, i.e., the intentional killing of a patient, motivated

by the physician's concern for the patient's suffering or

"indignity." This concept of euthanasia does not include

practices -- sometimes referred to as passive euthanasia but more

often not described as euthanasia at all -- in which a physician

lets a patient die (see generally James Rachels, Active and

Passive Euthanasia, 292 New England Journal of Medicine 78

[1975]; Thomas D. Sullivan, Active and Passive Euthanasia: An

Impertinent Distinction?, 3 Human Life Review 40 [1977], both

reprinted in Bonnie Steinbock, Alastair Norcross, Killing and

Letting Die 112-119, 131-138 [1994]; Daniel Callahan, Killing and

Allowing to Die, 19 Hastings Center Report, Special Supplement 5

[1989], reprinted in Michael Boylan, Medical Ethics 199-202

[2000]; L.W. Sumner, Assisted Death: A Study in Ethics and Law 19

& n 46 [2011]). Such essentially passive physician practices,

now generally considered unobjectionable in proper circumstances,

include, for example, removing a patient from a machine that

would prolong the patient's life or withdrawing nutrition and

Montana Supreme Court (see Baxter v State, 224 P3d 1211, 1222

[Mont 2009]).

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hydration from a patient undergoing palliative sedation.

I respectfully disagree with Judge Rivera's view that

the difference between palliative sedation and physician-assisted

suicide "is not meaningful in the constitutional sense"

(concurring op of Rivera, J., at 17). Instead, I would follow

the Supreme Court's analysis in Vacco v Quill (521 US 793

[1997]).

"[A] physician who withdraws, or honors a

patient's refusal to begin, life-sustaining

medical treatment purposefully intends, or

may so intend, only to respect his patient's

wishes and to cease doing useless and futile

or degrading things to the patient when the

patient no longer stands to benefit from

them. The same is true when a doctor

provides aggressive palliative care; in some

cases, painkilling drugs may hasten a

patient's death, but the physician's purpose

and intent is, or may be, only to ease his

patient's pain. A doctor who assists a

suicide, however, must, necessarily and

indubitably, intend primarily that the

patient be made dead. Similarly, a patient

who commits suicide with a doctor's aid

necessarily has the specific intent to end

his or her own life, while a patient who

refuses or discontinues treatment might not.

"The law has long used actors' intent or

purpose to distinguish between two acts that

may have the same result. Put differently,

the law distinguishes actions taken 'because

of' a given end from actions taken 'in spite

of' their unintended but foreseen

consequences" (id. at 801-803 [internal

quotation marks, square brackets, and

citations omitted]; see also id. at 808 n

11).2

2 See generally Sullivan, Active and Passive Euthanasia:

An Impertinent Distinction?, in Steinbock and Norcross at 136;

R.G. Frey, Intention, Foresight, and Killing, in Tom L.

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Finally, there is an important distinction between

voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia. Voluntary euthanasia is

euthanasia in accordance with the request of a mentally competent

patient. Non-voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia performed on

someone who, because of a factor such as infancy, mental

incompetence, coma, etc., is not able to choose euthanasia and

has never recorded a directive expressing his or her will in

regard to euthanasia. Involuntary euthanasia, not implicated

here, would be euthanasia performed on a person who is able to

give consent, but has not done so, either because the person was

not asked or because he or she withheld consent (see generally

L.W. Sumner, Assisted Death: A Study in Ethics and Law at 17). 

II.

The practice of physician-assisted suicide and

euthanasia in the Netherlands provides us with a disturbing

preview of what it would be rational to expect upon legalization. 

In what follows, I concentrate on that country, which has the

longest history of socially accepted euthanasia, while adding

comments on other jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia or

physician-assisted suicide. It will be clear from the foregoing

section that the practices to be discussed below are euthanasia

Beauchamp, Intending Death: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia

69-70 (1996); Greg Beabout, Morphine Use for Terminal Cancer

Patients: An Application of the Principle of Double Effect, 19

Philosophy in Context 49 (1989), reprinted in P.A. Woodward, The

Doctrine of Double Effect 298-311 (2001).

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and physician-assisted suicide, not palliative sedation or

removal of a patient from life support or other treatment.

In the Netherlands in 2002, the Termination of Life on

Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act was enacted

to legalize and regulate long-standing pre-existing practices of

physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. Under that

statute, a physician may end the life of a patient who is

experiencing unbearable suffering without hope of relief, at the

patient's explicit request, either by administering a lethal

dosage of medication (euthanasia) or by prescribing a

pharmaceutical means of suicide (physician-assisted suicide) (see

generally Government of the Netherlands, Is euthanasia allowed?,

at https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/contents/iseuthanasia-allowed [accessed August 21, 2017]).

In 2015, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide

accounted for 5,516 reported deaths in the Netherlands, almost

four percent of all deaths in the country, estimated at around

140,000 per annum (see Regional Euthanasia Review Committees,

Annual Report 2015, at 16, available at https://english.

euthanasiecommissie.nl/documents/publications/annual-reports/2002

/annual-reports/annual-reports [accessed August 21, 2017]). The

proportion of deaths attributed to euthanasia and physicianassisted suicide had more than doubled over ten years (see

Regional Euthanasia Review Committees, Annual Report 2005, at 2,

available at https://english.euthanasiecommissie.nl/documents/

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publications/annual-reports/2002/annual-reports/annual-reports

[accessed August 21, 2017] [1,933 cases of euthanasia and

assisted suicide were reported in 2005]).

The most immediately striking aspect of end-of-life

decision-making in the Netherlands is that no legal or ethical

distinction is drawn between physician-assisted suicide and

euthanasia. Similarly, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia

were made legal at the same time as one another in both Belgium

(2002) and Luxembourg (2009). In Canada, a 2015 Supreme Court of

Canada decision striking down a prohibition on assisted suicide

led to a June 2016 law legalizing both "the prescribing or

providing by a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner of a

substance to a person, at their request, so that they may

self-administer the substance and in doing so cause their own

death" (physician-assisted suicide) and "the administering by a

medical practitioner or nurse practitioner of a substance to a

person, at their request, that causes their death" (euthanasia)

(Statutes of Canada 2016, Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Criminal

Code and to make related amendments to other Acts [medical

assistance in dying], available at http://www.parl.ca/Document

Viewer/en/42-1/bill/C-14/royal-assent [accessed August 21, 2017];

see also https://openparliament.ca/bills/42-1/C-14 [accessed

August 21, 2017]). The movement from allowing physician-assisted

suicide to permitting euthanasia is facile; indeed, it apparently

has not even been perceived as a transition in some societies

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outside the United States that have legalized the former

practice.

It is true, as I have already noted, that in the United

States active euthanasia is nowhere legal, whereas physicianassisted suicide is permitted in six states and the District of

Columbia. I am not convinced, however, that this state of

affairs will last. The evidence from the Netherlands, Belgium,

Luxembourg, and Canada suggests it will not. Moreover, the line

between physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia is difficult to

defend. If a person has the statutory or other right to

physician-assisted suicide, does she lose the right to die if she

suddenly becomes too physically weak to self-administer lethal

prescribed drugs? "[T]his would arguably amount to

discrimination based upon physical disability" (Sampson v State,

31 P3d 88, 97 [Alaska 2001] [upholding as constitutional a

criminal statute prohibiting intentionally aiding another person

to commit suicide]; see also e.g. Dan W. Brock, Voluntary Active

Euthanasia, 22 Hastings Center Report 10, 10 [1992]). In

practice, it appears that in Oregon a feeding tube is sometimes

used to enable a patient who wishes to commit suicide using

prescription medication, but has lost mobility, to ingest the

lethal prescription (see Disability Rights Education & Defense

Fund, Some Oregon and Washington State Assisted Suicide Abuses

and Complications, Self-Administration, at https://lozier

institute.org/a-reality-check-on-assisted-suicide-in-oregon

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- 9 - No. 77

[accessed August 21, 2017]).

Indeed, this concern about the transition from

physician-assisted suicide to euthanasia was recognized by the

United States Supreme Court, which observed that "in some

instances, the patient may be unable to self-administer the drugs

and . . . administration by the physician . . . may be the only

way the patient may be able to receive them," and that "not only

physicians, but also family members and loved ones, will

inevitably participate in assisting suicide. Thus, it turns out

that what is couched as a limited right to 'physician-assisted

suicide' is likely, in effect, a much broader license, which

could prove extremely difficult to police and contain"

(Glucksberg, 521 US at 733 [internal quotation marks and

citations omitted]). Justice Souter expanded on the point,

noting that "[p]hysicians, and their hospitals, have their own

financial incentives, too, in this new age of managed care. 

Whether acting from compassion or under some other influence, a

physician who would provide a drug for a patient to administer

might well go the further step of administering the drug himself;

so, the barrier between assisted suicide and euthanasia could

become porous" (Glucksberg, 521 US at 784-785 [Souter, J.,

concurring]).

Based on the current experience in the Netherlands, an

expansion from physician-assisted suicide, by a patient taking a

prescription of fatal drugs, to euthanasia, by a nurse or

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- 10 - No. 77

physician administering a prescription of fatal drugs, seems all

but inevitable. Certainly the fear of that expansion, if

physician-assisted suicide were legalized in New York, is

reasonable.

III.

The Netherlands has displayed another very disturbing

trend: the countenancing of both voluntary euthanasia and nonvoluntary euthanasia. A study conducted in 2005 revealed that

2410 people in the Netherlands, 1.8% of all deaths in the

Netherlands that year, died as a result of voluntary euthanasia

or physician-assisted suicide,3 while 0.4% of all deaths, or some

560 people, died as "the result of the use of lethal drugs not at

the explicit request of the patient" (A. van der Heide et al.,

End-of-life practices in the Netherlands under the Euthanasia

Act, 356 N Engl J Med 1957 [Table 1] [2007] [emphasis added],

available at http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa071143

#t=articleTop [accessed August 21, 2017]; see also J. Pereira,

Legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide: the illusion of

safeguards and controls, 18 Curr Oncol e38 [2011], available at

3 This figure includes 1,933 reported cases and 477

unreported cases. The study classified actions as euthanasia or

physician-assisted suicide if the physician administered,

supplied, or prescribed drugs with the explicit intention of

hastening death, and at the explicit request of the patient,

resulting in the patient's death. Not classified as instances of

euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide were situations in which

medical treatment was withheld or withdrawn, or measures to

alleviate pain or other symptoms (such as palliative sedation)

were intensified.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710 [accessed

August 21, 2017]). In other words, for every five people who

died in the Netherlands as a result of euthanasia or physicianassisted suicide in the immediate wake of the legalization and

regulation of the practices, one died without explicitly

requesting death and thus in violation of the law. Such cases

involved, for example, patients who were "unconscious . . . or

incompetent owing to young age" (A. van der Heide et al.,

End-of-life practices in the Netherlands under the Euthanasia

Act), and it was more common for the euthanasia to be justified

by discussion with the patient's relatives than by past

discussion with the patient (see id.).

A similar study of euthanasia and physician-assisted

suicide in Belgium revealed a large proportion of patients who

received euthanasia without an explicit request, some 32% of

those who received euthanasia (see K. Chambaere et al.,

Physician-assisted deaths under the euthanasia law in Belgium: a

population-based survey, 182 Canadian Medical Association Journal

895, 896, 897 [Table 1] [2010], available at http://www.cmaj.ca/

content/182/9/895 [accessed August 21, 2017]). Typically, in

Belgian cases of non-voluntary euthanasia, the patient is in a

coma or suffering from dementia, and relatives or other

caregivers are consulted in advance regarding the euthanasia (see

id. at 898-899). 

In studying the modern experience in the Benelux

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nations, we are, of course, not facing government-sanctioned

forced euthanasia. The decision-makers in non-voluntary

euthanasia may be well-meaning. Such consultation, however, does

not render the euthanasia voluntary, and indeed brings to mind

the necessity of ensuring that decision-making about ending the

lives of vulnerable, terminally ill people is not entrusted

entirely to those who have the financial and emotional burden of

caring for them.

I am not suggesting that the legalization of voluntary

euthanasia, in a society such as the Netherlands in which it was

already widely practiced, necessarily increases the rate of nonvoluntary euthanasia. It may not invariably do so (see A. van

der Heide et al., End-of-life practices in the Netherlands under

the Euthanasia Act). My point is simply that physician-assisted

suicide and euthanasia are inevitably accompanied by instances of

non-voluntary euthanasia, so that it is rational to predict that

endorsement of physician-assisted suicide will lead to

occurrences of non-voluntary euthanasia.

There is also a reasonable concern that a descent from

voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide to nonvoluntary euthanasia would be an especial risk in vulnerable and

disadvantaged parts of society. In 1994, the New York State Task

Force on Life and the Law "unanimously recommend[ed] that New

York laws prohibiting assisted suicide and euthanasia should not

be changed" (New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, When

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Death Is Sought: Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the Medical

Context [May 1994], Executive Summary, available at https://www.

health.ny.gov/regulations/task_force/reports_publications/when_

death_is_sought [accessed August 21, 2017]).4 The Task Force

reasoned that "legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia would

pose profound risks to many individuals who are ill and

vulnerable. . . . The risk of harm is greatest for the many

individuals in our society whose autonomy and well-being are

already compromised by poverty, lack of access to good medical

care, advanced age, or membership in a stigmatized social group"

(New York State Task Force, When Death Is Sought at 120,

available at https://www.health.ny.gov/regulations/task_force/

reports_publications/when_death_is_sought/chap6.htm [accessed

August 21, 2017]). As the Task Force observed, "[n]o matter how

carefully any guidelines are framed, assisted suicide and

euthanasia will be practiced through the prism of social

inequality and bias that characterizes the delivery of services

in all segments of our society, including health care. The

practices will pose the greatest risks to those who are poor,

elderly, members of a minority group, or without access to good

medical care" (New York State Task Force, When Death Is Sought,

4 In 1985, the New York State Task Force on Life and the

Law was established by Governor Mario Cuomo, commissioned with "a

broad mandate to recommend public policy on issues raised by

medical advances" (https://www.health.ny.gov/regulations/task_

force/reports_publications/when_death_is_sought/preface.htm

[accessed August 21, 2017]).

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Executive Summary, available at https://www.health.ny.gov/

regulations/task_force/reports_publications/when_death_is_sought/

preface.htm [accessed August 21, 2017]).

Given an acceptance of physician-assisted suicide and

voluntary euthanasia, such practices could come over time to be

regarded as cheaper alternatives to medical treatment for the

terminally ill, leading to a particular risk of non-voluntary

euthanasia when a patient's socioeconomic disadvantages,

uninsured status, and/or dementia or mental incompetence make it

impossible for the patient to advocate vigorously for his or her

health care. "Frail and debilitated elderly people, often

demented or otherwise incompetent and thereby unable to defend

and assert their own interests, may be especially vulnerable to

unwanted euthanasia" (Brock, Voluntary Active Euthanasia, 22

Hastings Center Report at 21). 

It is true that research from Oregon suggests that such

fears of non-voluntary euthanasia of the vulnerable have not yet

come to pass. "[R]ates of assisted dying in Oregon . . . showed

no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly, women, the

uninsured . . ., people with low educational status, the poor,

the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with

psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic

minorities, compared with background populations" (Margaret P.

Battin, et al., Legal physician-assisted dying in Oregon and the

Netherlands: evidence concerning the impact on patients in

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"vulnerable" groups, 33 J Med Ethics 591 [2007], available at

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652799 [accessed

August 21, 2017]). Yet the experiment with physician-assisted

suicide on the West Coast is still young, and the Dutch

experience supports the rationality of such fears.

Another part of society that could be at significant

long-term risk is the community of people who are disabled. The

Disability Rights amici argue that while the plaintiffs "use the

term 'dignified death' to justify assisted suicide. . . . the

'indignities' nondisabled (and some newly disabled) people

invariably describe are the need for assistance in daily

activities like bathing, dressing, and other realities of having

a disability. Legalizing assisted suicide enshrines in law the

prejudice that death is preferable to receiving the assistance

that many disabled people rely on" (Amicus Brief of Disability

Rights Amici: Not Dead Yet et al., at 4). For the many members

of the disabled community who are not terminally ill, the

"indignities" that plaintiffs wish to avoid are suffered on a

daily basis. Legalizing physician-assisted suicide would convey

a societal value judgment that such "indignities" as physical

vulnerability and dependence mean that life no longer has any

intrinsic value. 

A disability does not deprive life of integrity or

value. There is no lack of nobility or true dignity in being

dependent on others. The natural developments of old age and

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final illness are dependence and waning consciousness. Many

disabilities come with similar challenges. It would be a

profound mistake to equate limits imposed on a person's life with

the conclusion that such a life has no value.

IV.

Last year, the American Psychiatric Association (APA)

stated its official policy on physician-assisted suicide or

euthanasia of psychiatric patients: "a psychiatrist should not

prescribe or administer any intervention to a non-terminally ill

person for the purpose of causing death" (APA, Position Statement

on Medical Euthanasia [December 2016], available at https://www.

psychiatry.org/home/policy-finder [accessed August 21, 2017]). 

At the time, a member of the APA's ethics committee stated that

he feared that Canada and the jurisdictions in the United States

that have legalized physician-assisted suicide are headed in the

same direction as the Netherlands and Belgium. "So far, no other

country that has implemented physician-assisted suicide has been

able to constrain its application solely to the terminally ill,

eventually including non-terminal patients as legally eligible as

well . . . This is when psychiatric patients start to be

included" (Michael Cook, American Psychiatric Association takes

historic stand on assisted suicide and euthanasia, BioEdge:

bioethics news from around the world, December 16, 2016,

available at https://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/americanpsychiatric-association-takes-historic-stand-on-assisted-suicide-

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a/12137 [accessed August 21, 2017]).

The experience of euthanasia in the Netherlands amply

justifies this assertion. Euthanasia and physician-assisted

suicide in the Netherlands have not been limited to those whose

pain is physical. As long as "the patient’s suffering is

unbearable and without prospect of improvement" (Government of

the Netherlands, Is euthanasia allowed?), a person whose illness

is psychiatric may request and receive euthanasia or commit

physician-assisted suicide. For example, in 2013, a woman in her

thirties suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and an

eating disorder, who engaged in "prolonged and extensive eating

and vomiting rituals," was considered a suitable candidate for

euthanasia because she "had tried every conceivable psychotherapy

and drug treatment" without success and "experienced her

suffering as unbearable" (id. at 24). In 2013, there were 42

reported cases of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide of

people with psychiatric, rather than physical, conditions, as

compared with 14 in 2012 and 13 in 2011 (see Regional Euthanasia

Review Committees, Annual Report 2013, at 9, available at

https://english.euthanasiecommissie.nl/documents/publications/

annual-reports/2002/annual-reports/annual-reports [accessed

August 21, 2017]). By 2015, the number of persons with

psychiatric suffering who received euthanasia in the Netherlands

was 56 (see Regional Euthanasia Review Committees, Annual Report

2015, at 6, available at https://english.euthanasiecommissie.nl/

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documents/publications/annual-reports/2002/annual-reports/annualreports [accessed August 21, 2017]).

A 2016 survey of the euthanasia and physician-assisted

suicide of 66 patients with psychiatric suffering in the

Netherlands from 2011 to 2014 found that in most cases the

patient's primary psychiatric condition was a depressive disorder

(S.Y.H. Kim et al., Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide of Patients

with Psychiatric Disorders in the Netherlands 2011 to 2014, 73

JAMA Psychiatry 362 [2016], available at http://jamanetwork.com/

journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2491354 [accessed August 21,

2017], at E3), ranging from "patients with chronic, severe,

difficult-to-treat depressions" to a woman who had lost her

husband and found life as a widow "meaningless" but "did not feel

depressed at all" and "ate, drank, and slept well . . . followed

the news and undertook activities" (id. at E3).

The same survey noted that most of the patients felt

"social isolation or loneliness," including one who believed

"that she had had a life without love and therefore had no right

to exist" and "an utterly lonely man whose life had been a

failure" (id. at E4). The authors of the survey concluded that

the patients receiving euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide

"are mostly women . . . with various chronic psychiatric

conditions, accompanied by personality disorders, significant

physical problems, and social isolation or loneliness" (id. at

E6). It is evident that the practice of physician-assisted

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suicide and euthanasia in the Netherlands has already descended

to the level of condoning the suicide or killing of people whose

primary suffering is not physical pain, but chronic depression.

Recently, the Netherlands has shown signs of taking a

new path down the slope that began with physician-assisted

suicide and euthanasia of the terminally ill. In 2016, the

Health Minister defended a proposed law allowing healthy older

people to seek euthanasia if they feel that they "do not have the

possibility to continue life in a meaningful way, . . . are

struggling with the loss of independence and reduced mobility, 

. . . have a sense of loneliness, partly because of the loss of

loved ones, and . . . are burdened by general fatigue,

deterioration and loss of personal dignity" (Dan Bilefsky,

Christopher F. Schuetze, Dutch Law Would Allow Assisted Suicide

for Healthy Older People, New York Times, Oct 14, 2016 at A5,

available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/world/europe/

dutch-law-would-allow-euthanasia-for-healthy-elderly-people.html?

_r=0 [accessed August 21, 2017]). The proposed law essentially

would allow people who are tired of life to end their lives.

Notably, the authors of the 2016 survey observe that

the requirement that there be no "prospect of improvement" has

proved controversial when the people seeking euthanasia are

psychiatric patients. The survey authors found that almost onethird of the patients had initially been refused euthanasia or

physician-assisted suicide and that almost one-quarter of the

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cases "engendered disagreements among the physicians involved"

(id. at E6 [emphasis added]). They noted "the . . . complicated

determinations of medical futility that must incorporate

patients' treatment refusals in the context of less-than-certain

prognosis even among persons with treatment-resistant depression"

(id.). Such disagreements are telling.

Of course, in the United States jurisdictions that

permit physician-assisted suicide, the practice is currently

limited to patients who have six months to live. The descent

down the slippery slope in the Netherlands, however, verifies the

fear that jurisdictions in this country will find it difficult to

limit the application of physician-assisted dying to the

terminally ill.

V.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the Dutch practice of

legalized euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide has quickly

been extended to young children. In the Netherlands, children

"may themselves request euthanasia from the age of 12, although

the consent of the parents or guardian is mandatory until they

reach the age of 16. Sixteen[-] and seventeen-year-olds do not

need parental consent in principle, but their parents must be

involved in the decision-making process. From the age of 18,

young people have the right to request euthanasia without

parental involvement" (Government of the Netherlands, Euthanasia,

assisted suicide and non-resuscitation on request, available at

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https://www.government.nl/topics/euthanasia/contents/euthanasia-a

ssisted-suicide-and-non-resuscitation-on-request [accessed August

21, 2017]). Recently, the Dutch Pediatric Association has called

for the age limit of 12 years old to be eliminated, so that "each

child’s ability to ask to die [w]ould be evaluated on a

case-by-case basis” (Dutch paediatricians: give terminally ill

children under 12 the right to die, The Guardian, June 19, 2015,

available at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/19/

terminally-ill-children-right-to-die-euthanasia-netherlands

[accessed August 21, 2017]).

This would put the Netherlands in line with Belgium. 

In 2014, a dozen years after the 2002 Belgian Act on Euthanasia

legalized euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for adults

suffering from constant, unbearable suffering (whether physical

or psychiatric) that cannot be alleviated, Belgium legalized

euthanasia by lethal injection for similarly situated children,

of any age, provided they possess "the capacity of discernment"

and there is parental consent (Belgium passes law extending

euthanasia to children of all ages, The Guardian, 13 February

2014, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/13/belgiumlaw-extends-euthanasia-children-all-ages [accessed August 21,

2017]).

The expansion of euthanasia to children needs little

commentary. Our society recognizes that minors "are in the

earlier stages of their emotional growth, that their intellectual

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development is incomplete, that they have had only limited

practical experience, and that their value systems have not yet

been clearly identified or firmly adopted" (People ex rel.

Wayburn v Schupf, 39 NY2d 682, 687-688 [1976]). The immaturity

of children makes them especially vulnerable. The Dutch

extension of euthanasia to minors is further proof that it is

reasonable to fear the consequences of legalizing physicianassisted suicide.5

VI.

The evidence from other countries is that legitimating

physician-assisted suicide can lead to the acceptance of nonvoluntary euthanasia and to the extension of physician-assisted

suicide to patients, such as those suffering from depression, who

are not terminally ill. Such developments, valuing the avoidance

of suffering above all virtues of endurance and hope for the

future, should be intensely disturbing to all of us. The risk of

facilitating such a bleak prospect is a rational justification

for New York's prohibition of assisted suicide.

5 There is also evidence of an extension of the practice

of physician-assisted suicide to non-physicians in the

Nethelands. A Dutch "suicide counselor" was acquitted of helping

a 54-year-old woman kill herself, despite advising her on the

quantity of drugs to be taken to be certain of death (T. Sheldon,

Dutch court acquits suicide counsellor of breaking the law, 334

BMJ 228 [2007], available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

articles/PMC1790785 [accessed August 21, 2017]).

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Myers v Schneiderman

No. 77 

GARCIA, J. (concurring):

I agree with and join in the Court's holdings that

Penal Law § 120.30 and § 125.15 (3) encompass aid-in-dying (per

curiam at Section III), and that the statutes do not violate

plaintiffs' right to equal protection under the New York State

Constitution (per curiam at Section IV.A.). To the extent

plaintiffs' allegations overlap with those asserted in Washington

v Glucksberg (521 US 702 [1997]), I also agree with the Court's

conclusion that, here, our State Due Process Clause is no broader

than its federal counterpart and, therefore, plaintiffs' claims

must fail. I write separately because I believe the Court should

go further; to the extent plaintiffs' assert a "more

particularized" challenge to the assisted suicide statutes (id.

at 750 [Stevens, J., concurring]), I would expressly reach -- and

reject -- those claims.

I.

In support of their due process claim, plaintiffs argue

that the assisted suicide statutes burden a fundamental right and

that, even if they do not, the statutes cannot survive rational

basis review. These precise arguments were asserted under the

Federal Constitution in Washington v Glucksberg (521 US 702

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- 2 - No. 77

[1997]), and were rejected by the United States Supreme Court. 

Accordingly, unless our State Due Process Clause supplies broader

protection, plaintiffs' claim here must similarly fail. 

A.

In Washington v Glucksberg, the Supreme Court rejected

the plaintiffs' due process challenge to Washington's prohibition

against "caus[ing]" or "aid[ing]" a suicide (521 US 702, 705

[1997]). There, the Court determined that the "right" to

assistance in committing suicide asserted by the plaintiffs was

"not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process

Clause" of the Federal Constitution (id. at 728). Because

Washington's ban on assisted suicide was "at least reasonably

related" to a number of "important and legitimate" state

interests, the Court concluded that it survived rational basis

review and that it did not violate the Due Process Clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment (id. at 735 [citation and quotation marks

omitted]).

Addressing the scope of its ruling, the Court carefully

framed the issue presented: "It is the [lower] court's holding

that Washington's physician-assisted suicide statute is

unconstitutional as applied to the class of terminally ill,

mentally competent patients that is before us today" (id. at 709

n 6 [citation and quotation marks omitted]).1 Accordingly, the

1 Although the lower court's holding "was not limited to a

particular set of plaintiffs before it" (id. at 709 n 6, quoting

id. at 739 [Stevens, J., concurring]), the Court determined that

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Supreme Court's holding affirmed the validity of the Washington

statute both "on its face" and "as applied to competent,

terminally ill adults who wish to hasten their deaths by

obtaining medication prescribed by their doctors" (id. at 735

[citation and quotation marks omitted]).

The same conclusion is warranted under our State Due

Process Clause. 

B.

In general, our Court "use[s] the same analytical

framework as the Supreme Court in considering due process cases"

(Hernandez v Robles, 7 NY3d 338, 362 [2006]). While, "[w]e have,

at times, held that our State Due Process Clause provides greater

protections than its federal counterpart" (per curiam at 9,

citing People v Aviles, 28 NY3d 497, 505 [2016]; see also People

v P.J. Video, 68 NY2d 296, 302-303 [1986]), I agree with the

Court's conclusion that this is not one of those times.

In Glucksberg, the Supreme Court began by considering

our Nation's "history, legal traditions, and practices" with

respect to aid-in-dying, emphasizing New York's pivotal role at

the forefront of legislative efforts to punish assisted suicide

(Glucksberg, 521 US at 710-719). Like most states, New York has

"consistently condemned, and continue[s] to prohibit, assisting

it had nonetheless ruled on the statute's constitutionality "as

applied to members of a group" -- an approach that is "not

uncommon" (id. at 709 n 6, citing Compassion in Dying v

Washington, 79 F.3d 790, 798 n 9 [9th Cir 1996 en banc]). 

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- 4 - No. 77

suicide" (id. at 719). The earliest American statute explicitly

outlawing assisted suicide was enacted in New York nearly two

centuries ago, with many States and Territories later following

New York's example (see id. at 715 [citations omitted]). In

1857, a New York commission led by Dudley Field drafted a

criminal code that prohibited "aiding" a suicide (id. [citation

omitted]). The Field Code was adopted in New York in 1881, and

"its language served as a model for several other western States'

statutes" (id. [citation omitted]). The language of the

prohibition remained largely unchanged until 1965, when Penal Law

§ 120.30 and § 125.15 (3) were enacted as part of a "new Penal

Law" that "reorganize[d] and modernize[d] penal provisions

proscribing conduct which has traditionally been considered

criminal" (Governor's Approval Mem, Bill Jacket, L 1965, ch 1030

at 35). 

Since then, the statutes have been repeatedly

reexamined, including by New York's Task Force on Life and the

Law, which studied physician-assisted suicide and unanimously

concluded that the "potential dangers" of such a "dramatic change

in public policy would outweigh any benefit that might be

achieved" (Glucksberg at 719 [citation omitted]). Despite

repeated attempts to legalize aid-in-dying in New York, the

Legislature has not retreated from its prohibition. 

To be sure, "the common law of New York" recognizes a

patient's right "to determine what shall be done with his own

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- 5 - No. 77

body and to control the course of his medical treatment" (Rivers

v Katz, 67 NY2d 485, 492 [1986]; see also Schloendorff v Society

of New York Hospital, 211 NY 125, 129–130 [1914]). In Matter of

Storar, we explicitly recognized a competent patient's right to

refuse medical treatment, even where the treatment may be

necessary to preserve the patient's life (52 NY2d 363, 369

[1981]). We again recognized the right of "a competent adult to

refuse treatment" in Matter of Fosmire, where we held that the

patient -- "an adult Jehovah's Witness [who] refused to consent

to blood transfusions" -- had a "right to decline the

transfusions" even though they were "necessary to save her life"

(75 NY2d 218, 221, 226 [1990]). And today, we reaffirm a

patient's fundamental right to refuse life-saving medical care or

treatment (per curiam at 1-2, 9-10). 

But we have never defined this fundamental right to

encompass the broad "right to die" that plaintiffs seek; rather,

we have consistently reaffirmed the widely-recognized distinction

between refusing life-sustaining treatment and assisted suicide

(per curiam at 10, citing Matter of Bezio v Dorsey, 21 NY3d 93,

103 [2013]; Matter of Fosmire, 75 NY2d at 227; Storar, 52 NY2d at

377 n 6). This distinction "comports with fundamental legal

principles of causation and intent" (Vacco v Quill, 521 US 793,

801 [1997]). When a patient refuses life-sustaining treatment

and succumbs to illness, the cause of death is the underlying

disease. By contrast, when a lethal medication is ingested, the

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- 6 - No. 77

cause of death is not the pre-existing illness, but rather, the

prescribed medication. In addition, a physician who withdraws

treatment or administers terminal sedation does not intend to

kill the patient, though that may be the eventual result. 

Rather, the physician intends only to respect the patient's right

to die naturally and free from intrusion, and to alleviate any

pain or discomfort that may accompany that decision. A physician

who provides aid-in-dying, however, indisputably intends for his

or her actions to directly cause the patient's death; that is the

very purpose of the lethal prescription.2

New York's "consistent and almost universal tradition"

has "long rejected the asserted right, and continues to

explicitly reject it today" (Glucksberg, 521 US at 723). The

assisted suicide statutes reflect the Legislature's longstanding

and considered policy choice, and we decline to "place the matter

outside the arena of public debate" by extending heightened

constitutional protection (id. at 720). Accordingly, in light of

2 Judge Rivera's assertion that "the intent of a third party

who assists the patient" is "irrelevant" to the legal analysis

(J. Rivera concurring op at 18) ignores the factual foundation of

plaintiffs' claim: plaintiffs seek a constitutional right not

only to hasten death, but to the affirmative assistance of

another in doing so. As the Supreme Court explained, "[t]he law

has long used actors' intent or purpose to distinguish between

two acts that may have the same result," and on this basis, "many

courts, including New York courts, have carefully distinguished

refusing life-sustaining treatment from suicide" (Vacco, 521 US

at 803). Comporting with this fundamental legal principle, the

State may rationally distinguish between various end-of-life

practices.

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- 7 - No. 77

New York's persistent and unambiguous legal practice, plaintiffs'

asserted right to aid-in-dying is not a fundamental right under

our State Due Process Clause. 

Because the assisted suicide statutes do not implicate

a fundamental right, they need only be "rationally related to any

conceivable legitimate State purpose" (People v Walker, 81 NY2d

661, 668 [1993] [citations omitted]). As the rational basis test

is "the most relaxed and tolerant form of judicial scrutiny,"

plaintiffs bear the "heavy burden" of defeating the "strong

presumption" that the statutes are valid (City of Dallas v

Stanglin, 490 US 19, 26 [1989]). Even if the State could "better

promote and protect" its interests "through regulation, rather

than prohibition, of physician-assisted suicide," our inquiry is

"limited to the question whether the State's prohibition is

rationally related to legitimate state interests" (Glucksberg,

521 US at 728 n 21). So long as this basic requirement is

satisfied, we "need not weigh exactingly the relative strengths"

of the various competing interests (id. at 735).3 

3 The analysis in Judge Rivera's concurring opinion -- which

concludes that the State's interests "do not outweigh" a

patient's right as death draws near (J. Rivera concurring op at

2; see also id. at 10, 12, 21, 23, 27) -- bears little

resemblance to our well-established rational basis review. 

Rational basis is not a balancing test. Rather, under this

relaxed standard, plaintiffs' claims must fail so long as any

conceivable legitimate State interest supports the challenged

legislation (Affronti, 95 NY2d at 719 [citation omitted]). As

discussed below, the assisted suicide statutes "easily satisfy"

this requirement (Vacco, 521 US at 809). 

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- 8 - No. 77

A number of legitimate State interests support the

assisted suicide statutes. First, the State has a significant

interest in preserving life and preventing suicide (per curiam at

12; see also Storar, 52 NY2d at 377; Bezio, 21 NY3d at 104;

Glucksberg, 521 US at 729). Suicide presents a "serious public

health problem," often plaguing those who "suffer from depression

or other mental disorders" -- conditions that may be difficult to

diagnose (Glucksberg, 521 US at 730 [citation omitted]). The

availability of assisted suicide would therefore undermine the

State's interest in preventing suicide in cases involving, for

instance, untreated depression, coercion, or improperly managed

pain.

Additionally, the State has a substantial interest in

guarding against the risks of mistake and abuse. Physicians are

often unable to accurately ascertain how much time a terminallyill patient has remaining, or may misdiagnose an illness as

terminal, thereby creating a risk that patients will elect

assisted suicide based on inaccurate or misleading information

(Amicus Brief of The 39 Physicians, at 17-19). Moreover,

assisted suicide presents substantial "risks . . . to the

elderly, poor, socially disadvantaged, and those without access

to good medical care" (Task Force, When Death Is Sought: Assisted

Suicide and Euthanasia in the Medical Context [May 1994]). The

State has a valid interest in protecting these vulnerable groups

from the societal, familial, and financial pressures that might

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- 9 - No. 77

influence a patient's decision to pursue aid-in-dying

(Glucksberg, 521 US at 731; Brief of Disability Rights Amici, at

10, 15-16; Amicus Brief of The 39 Physicians, at 11).

The State has also asserted a valid interest in

preserving the integrity of the medical profession. A number of

medical professionals -- including the American Medical

Association, the Medical Society of the State of New York, the

New York State Hospice and Palliative Care Association, and the

New York State Task Force on Life and the Law -- expressly reject

physician-assisted suicide as an accepted medical practice (e.g.

Brief of The 39 Physicians, at 4-13). Many believe that

"physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with

the physician's role as healer," and could "undermine the trust

that is essential to the doctor-patient relationship by blurring

the time-honored line between healing and harming" (Glucksberg,

521 US at 731 [citations and quotation marks omitted]). 

The Supreme Court has recognized that these, and other,

"valid and important public interests" support New York's

assisted suicide statutes (Vacco, 521 US at 809). Each of these

State interests, by itself, "easily satisf[ies] the

constitutional requirement that a legislative classification bear

a rational relation to some legitimate end" (id.); collectively,

they overwhelmingly substantiate the Legislature's prohibition of

aid-in-dying. Accordingly, as in Glucksberg, the assisted

suicide statutes do not violate our State Due Process Clause

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- 10 - No. 77

either on their face or "as applied to competent, terminally ill

adults who wish to hasten their deaths by obtaining medication

prescribed by their doctors" (Glucksberg, 521 US at 735 [citation

and quotation marks omitted]).

II.

Despite the breadth of Glucksberg's holding, plaintiffs

-- and others -- suggest that the Supreme Court left open the

possibility that some other plaintiff, under some other set of

circumstances, might successfully assert an as-applied challenge

to an assisted suicide ban (see Glucksberg, 521 US at 738-788

[Stevens, J., concurring]; see also per curiam at 10; Morris v

Brandenberg, 376 P3d 836, 847 [NM 2016]; James Bopp, Jr. &

Richard E. Coleson, Three Strikes: Is An Assisted Suicide Right

Out?, 15 Issues L. & Med. 3, 35-36 [1999]; Adam J. Cohen, The

Open Door: Will the Right to Die Survive Washington v Glucksberg

and Vacco v Quill?, 16 In Pub. Int. 79, 98-107 [1997]; PhysicianAssisted Suicide, 111 Harvard Law Rev. 237, 243-45 [1997]). 

Although plaintiffs here assert a more particularized challenge

to the assisted suicide statutes, their as-applied challenge

nonetheless fails.

A.

In Glucksberg, Justice Stevens, concurring in the

judgment, asserted that the Court had conceived of the

plaintiffs' claim "as a facial challenge -- addressing not the

application of the statute to a particular set of plaintiffs

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- 11 - No. 77

before it, but the constitutionality of the statute's categorical

prohibition" against assisting a suicide (Glucksberg, 521 US at

740 [Stevens, J., concurring]). Specifically, Justice Stevens

noted that all three of the terminally ill patient-plaintiffs had

died during the pendency of the litigation, and the Court

therefore "did not have before it any individual plaintiff

seeking to hasten her death or any doctor who was threatened with

prosecution for assisting in the suicide of a particular

plaintiff" (id. at 739 [Stevens, J., concurring]). Accordingly,

Justice Stevens contended that the Court's holding left open "the

possibility that some applications of the statute might well be

invalid" (id. [Stevens, J., concurring]). 

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Rehnquist

conceded that the Court's opinion did not "absolutely foreclose"

the possibility that "an individual plaintiff seeking to hasten

her death, or a doctor whose assistance was sought, could prevail

in a more particularized challenge" (id. at 735 n 24, citing id.

at 750 [Stevens, J., concurring]). But to the extent the Court

left open the prospect of a successful future due process

challenge, its concession was a narrow one. The Court made

clear: "[G]iven our holding that the Due Process Clause of the

Fourteenth Amendment does not provide heightened protection to

the asserted liberty interest in ending one's life with a

physician's assistance, such a claim would have to be quite

different from the ones advanced by [the] respondents here" (id.

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- 12 - No. 77

at 735 n 24 [emphasis added]; see also Vacco, 521 US at 809 n

13). In the twenty years since Glucksberg was decided, not a

single plaintiff has asserted a successful constitutional

challenge to an assisted suicide ban.

B.

Plaintiffs here explicitly seek to present the "more

particularized" as-applied challenge purportedly "not

foreclose[d]" by Glucksberg (Glucksberg, 521 US at 739 [Stevens,

J., concurring]). As detailed in the complaint, plaintiffs'

allegations encompass a number of diverse parties whose

experiences span the myriad stages of terminal illness.4

At the time the complaint was filed, plaintiffs

included three competent, terminally ill patients who sought "to

declare unconstitutional the application of New York penal law"

to their respective circumstances. These patient-plaintiffs

requested, among other things, the option to "ingest medications

prescribed by [their] doctor[s] to achieve a peaceful death."

Plaintiffs also include a number of medical providers,

including physicians whose patients "have requested" assistance

to "help them die peacefully and with dignity." As alleged in

the complaint, each physician-plaintiff, in the course of his

4 Given the breadth and nature of plaintiffs' allegations,

outlined briefly below, I agree with Judge Rivera's implicit

determination that plaintiffs' claims encompass the "sub-group of

patients" who have entered the "final stage of the dying process"

(J. Rivera concurring op at 2-3). Our disagreement concerns the

merits -- rather than the scope -- of these claims.

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- 13 - No. 77

current medical practice, "regularly encounters mentallycompetent, terminally-ill patients who have no chance of recovery

and for whom medicine cannot offer any hope other than some

degree of symptomatic relief." In some of those cases, "even

symptomatic relief is impossible to achieve without the use of

terminal sedation." An "[u]ncertainty about the application" of

the assisted suicide statutes deters these medical professional

from "exercising [their] best professional judgment to provide

aid-in-dying."

Plaintiffs allege, among other things, that the

assisted suicide statutes "violate[] the patient [p]laintiffs'

rights (and the rights of the physician [p]laintiffs' mentallycompetent, terminally-ill patients . . . and [End of Life Choices

New York]'s mentally-competent-terminally-ill clients) . . . in

violation of the Due Process Clause of the New York

Constitution." They seek a declaration that "the application" of

the assisted suicide statutes to plaintiffs' conduct violates the

New York Constitution, as well as an order enjoining defendants

"from prosecuting [p]laintiffs for seeking or providing aid-indying."

C.

Plaintiffs' challenge, though more particularized, is

not meaningfully "different" from the claims rejected in

Glucksberg (521 US at 735 n 24). Given our holding that the Due

Process Clause of the New York State Constitution does not

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- 14 - No. 77

provide heightened protection to the asserted liberty interest,

plaintiffs must show, with respect to their as-applied challenge,

that the assisted suicide statutes no longer survive rational

basis review. Plaintiffs cannot make the requisite showing

because, despite the uniquely compelling interests of the

terminally ill "facing an impending painful death" (J. Rivera

concurring op at 10), the State's asserted interests subsist even

where a patient is "in the final stage of life" (J. Rivera

concurring op at 20). 

The legitimate interests advanced by the State support

the assisted suicide statutes irrespective of a patient's

proximity to death or eligibility for terminal sedation. For

instance, the State may permissibly conclude that its interest in

preserving life does not "diminish" merely because a patient's

death may be "certain" or "imminent" (J. Rivera concurring op at

2, 27). Rather, research demonstrates that "suicidal feelings in

terminally ill people" are often "remediable through other means,

including pain management, hospice services and counseling,"

notwithstanding the patient's impending or imminent death (Brief

of Disability Rights Amici, at 21). In the State's view, this

data may undermine any assurance that, in the "last stage of

life," a patient's "choice is not motivated by depression and

helplessness, but by the desire to exercise autonomy to achieve a

peaceful death" (J. Rivera concurring op at 22-23).

The risk of misuse similarly persists regardless of a

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patient's "stage of the dying process" (J. Rivera concurring op

at 2). Indeed, "many patients prescribed [lethal] drugs do not

ultimately take them" (J. Rivera concurring op at 15 n 5),

creating a substantial danger that the dosage will be

deliberately or accidentally misused. While that risk may be "no

more" than with other dangerous drugs (J. Rivera concurring op at

26), the State's legitimate interest does not fail merely because

the assisted suicide statutes do not "cover every evil that might

conceivably have been attacked" (McDonald v Board of Election

Commissioners of Chicago, 394 US 802, 809 [1969]). Moreover,

given the lethal repercussions of misuse -- the dosage is

deliberately designed to cause death -- the Legislature's

targeted effort to address this uniquely acute risk is certainly

rational (Williamson v Lee Optical Co, 348 US 483, 489 [1955]

[noting that the State may act "one step at a time, addressing

itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute"]). 

Nor does the State's interest in promoting sound

medical ethics dissipate as death draws near (J. Rivera

concurring op at 23-26). To the contrary, the State has asserted

that the assisted suicide statutes encourage the unconditional

treatment of the terminally ill and preserve the critical element

of trust in a doctor-patient relationship at a time often marked

by intense fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Even assuming

this asserted rationale is "not uniformly accepted" (J. Rivera

concurring op at 23), skepticism of aid-in-dying unquestionably

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- 16 - No. 77

remains among well-regarded medical professionals, including a

number of the State's amici in this case. The State is entitled

to adopt this legitimate medical perspective, which, by itself,

adequately substantiates the assisted suicide statutes. 

In any event, the State may permissibly conclude that

an absolute ban on assisted suicide is the most reliable,

effective, and administrable means of protecting against its

inherent dangers (per curiam at 14; see also Glucksberg, 521 US

at 731-733). Indeed, the State's legitimate interest in

promoting a bright-line rule is particularly evident when

considering the challenges posed by regulation. For instance,

Judge Rivera's proposed rule, which would permit aid-in-dying in

the "last painful stage of life," would purportedly apply only

where a patient qualifies as "mentally competent" and "terminally

ill"; where the patient is "experiencing intractable pain and

suffering"; where "pain treatment is inadequate"; where death is

"certain" and "imminent"; and where the patient's choice "is not

motivated by depression and helplessness" (J. Rivera concurring

op at 2, 3, 11, 23, 27). But the concurrence fails to offer any

concrete guidance regarding how these amorphous threshold

eligibility determinations should be made. Faced with these

complex and delicate calculations, the Legislature may rationally

conclude that the clarity and certainty of an absolute ban best

protects against the inherent risks of physician-assisted

suicide.

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- 17 - No. 77

III. 

The Due Process Clause of our State Constitution does

not encompass a fundamental right to physician-assisted suicide,

and the State's prohibition is rationally related to a number of

legitimate government interests -- interests that support the

assisted suicide statutes irrespective of a patient's "stage of

the dying process" (J. Rivera concurring op at 2, 11). To the

extent a hypothetical future plaintiff -- presenting a "quite

different" set of circumstances -- might come forward, the

prospect of a successful constitutional challenge is never

"absolutely foreclose[d]" (Glucksberg, 521 US at 735 n 24). But

in light of the Court's holding today -- and our unanimous

conclusion that heightened scrutiny is unwarranted -- it is

difficult to conceive of such a case. Plaintiffs' claims are

better addressed to the Legislature.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Order affirmed, without costs. Opinion Per Curiam. Judges

Rivera, Stein, Fahey, Garcia and Wilson concur, Judge Rivera in a

concurring opinion, Judge Fahey in a separate concurring opinion,

and Judge Garcia in a separate concurring opinion in which Judge

Stein concurs. Chief Judge DiFiore and Judge Feinman took no

part.

Decided September 7, 2017

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