Ending more than two months of speculation in a closely watched California court case, a Riverside County judge on Friday refused to suspend California’s new right-to-die law.
But he did allow the case to go forward.
To the relief of aid-in-dying advocates, Daniel Ottolia, Riverside County Superior Court judge, rejected a preliminary injunction motion to temporarily suspend the End of Life Option Act, saying to do so could obstruct the rights of terminally ill Californians who might want to access the law.
Still, he denied the local district attorney’s office that the case be dismissed, agreeing with the plaintiffs that their arguments were not abstract in nature and affected real lives.
The case will resume Dec. 5.
“The court got it right by denying the request for an injunction,” said John Kappos, a partner in the Newport Beach law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Compassion & Choices. The nonprofit group spearheaded last year’s effort to pass California’s right-to-die law.
“We did not get the temporary injunction we wanted, but the case is moving forward,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Alexandra Snyder of the Napa-based Life Legal Defense Foundation. She said her clients have not decided if they will appeal the judge’s ruling.
The End of Life Option Act, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in October, allows mentally competent adults who are diagnosed with six months or less to live to seek medication from a doctor to end their lives.
The law went into effect June 9. The same day, opponents — including six Riverside County-area doctors and the American Academy of Medical Ethics — filed a lawsuit challenging the law.
The plaintiffs had asked for a temporary restraining order prohibiting Riverside County from recognizing any part of the law, as well as a preliminary injunction barring county officials from recognizing its constitutionality.
Snyder believes the law decriminalizes what she calls “physician-assisted suicide” and removes criminal law, elder abuse and mental health legal protections from anyone deemed terminally ill, even though such diagnoses can be inaccurate.
Snyder also said that because the law does not require terminally ill people to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, patients with untreated depression and suicidal ideation could be prescribed the lethal drugs by a physician.
But proponents of the law, including Compassion & Choices and the Portland, Oregon-based Death with Dignity National Center said the lawsuit, like those previously filed by opponents in other right-to-die states, has no merit.
The right-to-die advocates have said the plaintiffs’ concerns are based on “pure speculation” that such abuse of terminally ill patients will happen. But they said abuse has not occurred in the four other states where these laws are in place.
Snyder disputes that assertion.
By its own admission, she said, the state of Oregon has acknowledged that it does not have the resources to investigate whether foul play had a role in self-administered deaths.
“We simply don’t know if abuse has occurred,” Snyder said.
Earlier this year, opponents failed to collect enough signatures to place a measure on the November ballot to overturn the law.
Contact Tracy Seipel at 408-920-5343. Follow her at Twitter.com/taseipel.
