The experimentation that should be out of the question in constitutional adjudication displacing legislative judgments is entirely proper, as well as highly desirable, when the legislative power addresses an emerging issue like assisted suicide. The court should accordingly stay its hand to allow reasonable legislative consideration. While I do not decide for all time that respondents' claim should not be recognized, I acknowledge the legislative institutional competence as the better one to deal with that claim at this time. The question presented by this case is whether New York's prohibition on assisting suicide therefore violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. We hold that it does not.
Petitioners are various New York public officials.
Respondents Timothy E. Quill, Samuel C. Klagsbrun and Howard A. Grossman are physicians who practice in New York. Respondents, and three gravely ill patients who have since died, sued the state's attorney general in the United States District Court. The district court disagreed. On their faces, neither New York's ban on assisting suicide nor its statutes permitting patients to refuse medical treatment treat anyone differently than anyone else or draw any distinctions between persons. The state enacted its current assisted-suicide statutes in 1965.