The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge by the Bush administration to Oregon's Death With Dignity Act - a move that could threaten the rights of states to make their own decisions about public health and medicine. 
 
Continuing a fight started in 2001 by his predecessor, John Ashcroft, current Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is trying to overturn the nation's first voter-approved assisted suicide law on the grounds that the physician prescription of drugs to hasten the deaths of terminally ill patients violates the  federal  Controlled Substances Act (CSA), the statute underpinning federal drug policies. The  Bush Justice Department contends that the CSA permits doctors to prescribe controlled substances only for legitimate medical purposes, and that the Attorney General has the right to decide what constitutes a legitimate medical purpose. In 2001, John Ashcroft unilaterally decided that the prescription of drugs to hasten the deaths of terminally ill patients under Oregon's law was not a legitimate medical purpose, and threatened to sanction Oregon physicians who followed the state law.   
 
Oregon physicians, patients and state officials went to court and managed to fight off the Bush administration's attempts to thwart the new law.  Two lower federal courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sided with the people of Oregon, saying that the Bush administration exceeded its authority under the CSA in threatening Oregon doctors, and noting that the states, not the federal government, are the ultimate arbiters of appropriate medical practice. 
 
The Alliance is closely watching this case because a win for the administration in the U.S.Supreme Court could empower the executive branch to undermine other state-level legislation in the areas of medicine and public health, including important drug policy reform efforts underway across the country. The Alliance  plans to file an amicus, or "friend of the court," brief, with the Supreme Court in this case, which will clarify the appropriate limits of federal government power vis-a-vis the states.  
 
Briefs in the Oregon case will  be filed over the summer and oral arguments will likely be heard in October. Daniel Abrahamson, the Alliance's Director of Legal Affairs, says of the case:  "This challenge to Oregon's law is a blatant example of the Bush Administration's overreaching.  The Attorney General, through an illegal power grab, seeks to impose his personal moral judgments on the entire nation, nothwithstanding the clear and contrary views and desires of the citizens of Oregon.  It is imperative that the Supreme Court rein in the Justice Department and restore the rights of states to be the laboratories of experiment with respect to matters of medicine and health."