U.S. District Court Judge Hogan enjoins Oregon's Measure 16 and bars the state from putting the law into effect. Oregon Death with Dignity Legal Defense and Education Center is founded to defend the world's first Death with Dignity law and to guide its implementation. Washington State's Compassion ruling is overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, reinstating the anti-suicide law. U.S. District Judge Hogan rules that Measure 16, Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, is unconstitutional because it discriminates against the terminally-ill. The ruling is appealed by the state and Oregon Death with Dignity Legal Defense and Education Center.
Surveys find that doctors disregard most advance directives.
The decision holds that assisted-dying is protected by the liberty and privacy provisions of the U.S. Constitution. They are not free, however, to force their views, their religious convictions, or their philosophies on all the other members of a democratic society, and to compel those whose values differ with theirs to die painful, protracted, and agonizing deaths. In April, the Second Circuit joins the Ninth in recognizing constitutional protection for assisted-dying in the Quill case. Four terminally ill patients hastened their deaths before the law was overturned in March of 1997. In November, the Death with Dignity Education Center hosts the first national forum on physician aid in dying to include representatives from all points of view, in New York City.