Disability rights and patient advocacy groups in Illinois have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new law that allows terminally ill patients to seek medication to end their own lives.
The advocates oppose the right-to-die legislation, which will take effect in September. Gov. JB Pritzker signed the bill into law last year, making Illinois the 12th state to permit medical aid in dying. The law allows certain terminally ill adults to obtain a prescription from a physician for medication they may choose to take to end their lives.
The suits, filed in Illinois and New York on Thursday, contend the legislation “discriminates against people with disabilities by singling them out for lethal prescriptions rather than providing equal access to the care, support, and suicide prevention services offered to those perceived as non or less disabled,” according to the End Assisted Suicide coalition.
“Assisted suicide laws in New York and Illinois create a separate and unequal system in which people with life-threatening disabilities are offered death instead of the support programs everyone else gets,” said Matt Vallière, president and executive director of plaintiff organization Institute for Patients’ Rights.
“These legal actions are about affirming that every person has inestimable value and dignity, regardless of age, disability, or prognosis, and ensuring that no one is treated as disposable under the law.”
Under the law, people 18 or older will be able to request a fatal medication if they’ve been diagnosed by two physicians with an illness that will result in death within six months.
Patients will have to make a series of oral and written requests themselves — not through a guardian, surrogate, advance legal document or other proxy — with witnesses attesting.
Physicians will have to confirm the patient is “of sound mind,” and inform them of other end-of-life options such as hospice and palliative care.
If prescribed a life-ending drug, patients would administer it themselves. Health care providers aren’t required to participate.
However, advocates claim the law violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses, as well as state constitutional protections.
Advocates called the law “dangerous,” arguing it allows assisted suicide at a time when many people with disabilities are struggling to access support services. They pointed to ongoing Medicaid cuts, a nationwide shortage of home care workers and increasing pressures toward institutionalization, which they say have left many people with disabilities without the resources needed to live safely and independently.
Plaintiffs in Illinois include Chicago ADAPT, Progress Center for Independent Living, Dr. Nooshig Luz Salvador, Ebony Payne and Pam Heavens.
“I joined the lawsuit because of personal experiences that brought me really close to death and the people who I leaned on to do the right thing became the people to do the opposite,” Payne, a quadriplegic from Chicago, said in a statement. “It [the Illinois law] is a train wreck and is not what you expect from people who are obligated to do no harm.”