79 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 1996) (en banc)
Compassion in Dying v. Washington is a landmark Ninth Circuit decision that squarely confronted whether the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause protects a competent, terminally ill adult's choice to hasten death with a physician's assistance.
Does Washington's categorical criminal prohibition on physician-assisted suicide violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause by denying competent, terminally ill adults the liberty to choose the time and manner of death with a physician's assistance?
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects fundamental liberty interests in intimate and personal decision-making, including bodily integrity and medical autonomy. Where a statute substantially burdens a fundamental liberty interest, it must be narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests; broad, categorical prohibitions that needlessly infringe such an interest are unconstitutional, at least as applied to the protected class of individuals. In assessing end-of-life autonomy, precedents recognizing the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment (e.g., Cruzan) and privacy in intimate medical decisions (e.g., Casey) inform the scope of protected liberty.
Yes. The Ninth Circuit (en banc) held that the liberty component of the Due Process Clause encompasses a competent, terminally ill adult's choice to obtain physician assistance in dying. Washington's categorical criminal ban, as applied to such individuals and the physicians who would assist them, is unconstitutional because it is not narrowly tailored to the state's asserted interests.
For law students, Compassion in Dying is a pivotal study in how lower courts identify and define unenumerated fundamental rights under substantive due process. The decision synthesizes privacy, autonomy, and bodily integrity precedents and then applies strict or heightened scrutiny to assess whether the state's interests can justify a categorical prohibition. It also illustrates judicial management of sensitive moral questions by narrowly tailoring holdings to specific contexts (competent, terminally ill adults; patient self-administration) and by stressing regulatory alternatives. Doctrinally, the case is equally important for its aftermath. The Supreme Court, in Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), reversed, rejecting recognition of a fundamental right to assisted suicide and upholding Washington's ban under a history-and-tradition framework. Alongside Vacco v. Quill (1997), which rejected an equal protection challenge to New York's similar ban, Glucksberg set the governing federal constitutional baseline. Nonetheless, Compassion in Dying helped catalyze state-level legislation (e.g., Oregon's Death with Dignity Act) and continues to inform debates over substantive due process methodology, medical ethics, and end-of-life policy.