Washington v. Glucksberg
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld Washington State's ban on assisted suicide, ruling that the Constitution does not protect a right to have a doctor help a person end their life.
The decision leaves the question of physician-assisted suicide to the states, allowing legislatures and voters to keep banning it, permit it, or regulate it as they see fit.
How it got here: A federal trial court and then the full Ninth Circuit ruled the ban unconstitutional as applied to dying, competent patients; Washington asked the Supreme Court to review it.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Washington State made it a felony to knowingly help someone attempt suicide. Several Washington doctors who treated terminally ill patients, along with a nonprofit counseling group, sued, arguing that mentally competent, terminally ill adults have a constitutional right to get a doctor's help in hastening their deaths, and that the ban unconstitutionally blocked that choice.
The question before the Court
Does the Constitution protect a right for terminally ill, mentally competent adults to get a doctor's help in ending their lives?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that the Due Process Clause does not protect a right to a doctor's help in committing suicide, even for mentally competent, terminally ill adults. It found no deeply rooted historical or legal tradition supporting such a right; to the contrary, assisting suicide has been condemned and prohibited for centuries, even as attitudes toward suicide itself softened.
Because the claimed right is not "fundamental," the Court only asked whether Washington's ban was reasonably related to legitimate state interests, such as preserving life, protecting vulnerable people from coercion, and preventing a slide toward broader euthanasia. It found those interests easily satisfied that lenient standard, so the ban stands, though several justices left open the possibility that a more specific, individual claim might be assessed differently in the future.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Terminally ill patients in most states still cannot legally obtain a doctor's help to end their lives, and doctors who provide such help can still face criminal charges. States remain free to experiment: some have since legalized the practice through their own legislatures or ballot initiatives, while most continue to ban it.
What changes now
The case is a final merits decision, not a temporary order. The Ninth Circuit's ruling striking down the ban is reversed, and Washington's law remains enforceable. The decision leaves the states free to keep banning, legalize, or regulate physician-assisted suicide through their own legislatures and ballot initiatives, and the debate over its morality and practicality continues in the political arena rather than the courts.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly left open whether a particular dying patient in severe, unrelievable pain might have a narrower constitutional claim in a future, more specific lawsuit. Several concurring justices emphasized that today's ruling only rejects a broad, generalized right to assisted suicide, not every conceivable individual claim.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice O'Connor
Justice O'Connor joined the Court's judgment but stressed that there was no need to decide whether a suffering, competent, dying patient has a narrower constitutional interest in controlling the circumstances of death, since patients in Washington and New York already could obtain pain-relieving medication even to the point of hastening death. She trusted the states to strike the proper balance through ongoing democratic debate.
Concurrence — Justice Stevens
Justice Stevens agreed the statute was not facially invalid but argued the Constitution might still protect some individual, particularized claims to hasten death, drawing an analogy to capital punishment cases where general validity did not preclude finding specific applications unconstitutional. He viewed the interest in avoiding intolerable pain and indignity as potentially entitled to protection in a more specific case.
Concurrence — Justice Souter
“The case for the slippery slope is fairly made out here, not because recognizing one due process right would leave a court with no principled basis to avoid recognizing another, but because there is a plausible case that the right claimed would not be readily containable”Justice Souter explains why he would still reject the claim despite using a different legal framework.
Justice Souter rejected the majority's rigid history-and-tradition test in favor of Justice Harlan's Poe v. Ullman approach, which balances the individual's liberty interest against the state's justification on a case-by-case basis. He nonetheless concluded that Washington's interest in guarding against abuse and involuntary euthanasia was strong enough, and the facts about risk too contested, to defeat the doctors' claim now, while leaving room for legislative experimentation.
Concurrence — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg concurred in the judgments substantially for the reasons given by Justice O'Connor, without writing separately in detail.
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with the outcome but thought the relevant liberty interest, if any, would be better described as a 'right to die with dignity' encompassing control over the manner of death, medical assistance, and avoidance of severe pain. Because Washington and New York law did not actually prevent doctors from giving effective pain medication, he found no infringement of that interest here, though a state law blocking palliative care might raise a different issue.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applies its established substantive due process framework, under which rights get special constitutional protection only if they are objectively 'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition' and 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.'
- Surveying over 700 years of Anglo-American legal history, the Court found that assisting suicide has almost always been treated as a serious wrong, and that even as many states decriminalized suicide itself, they kept bans on assisting it.
- Because no deeply rooted tradition supports a right to assistance in suicide, the Court declined to treat it as a 'fundamental' liberty interest requiring the strictest constitutional test, and instead asked only whether the ban is rationally related to a legitimate government purpose.
- Applying that lenient rational-basis review, the Court found the state's asserted interests—preserving life, preventing suicide linked to depression, protecting vulnerable groups from coercion, and guarding against a slide toward euthanasia—were legitimate and sufficiently connected to the ban.
- Because the ban easily survived rational-basis review, the Court concluded the Due Process Clause does not require states to allow physician-assisted suicide, leaving the policy choice to the ordinary democratic process.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dept. of Health (497 U.S. 261)
The Court said Cruzan's assumed right to refuse treatment does not extend into a right to assistance in committing suicide.
Distinguishes Casey (505 U.S. 833)
The Court held Casey's language about personal autonomy does not establish a broad right covering assisted suicide.