Washington v. Glucksberg

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Washington v. Glucksberg

Argued January 8, 1997
Decided June 26, 1997


Full case name:	Washington, et al., Petitioners v. Harold Glucksberg, et al.

Citations:	521 U.S. 702; 117 S. Ct. 2258; 117 S. Ct. 2302; 138 L. Ed. 2d 772; 1997 U.S. LEXIS 4039; 65 U.S.L.W. 4669; 97 Cal. Daily Op. Service 5008; 97 Daily Journal DAR 8150; 11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 190

Prior history:	On writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Holding

The Court held that a right to assistance in committing suicide was not protected by the Due Process Clause.

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer

Case opinions

Majority by: Rehnquist
Joined by: O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
Concurrence by: O'Connor
Joined by: Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurrence by: Stevens
Concurrence by: Souter
Concurrence by: Ginsburg
Concurrence by: Breyer

Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997),^[1] was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a right to assistance in committing suicide was not protected by the Due Process Clause.

Dr. Harold Glucksberg, a physician—along with a few other physicians, three terminally ill patients, and a non-profit organization counseling those considering assisted-suicide—challenged Washington state's ban against assisted suicide. They claimed that assisted suicide was a liberty interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The District Court favored Glucksberg, the 9th Circuit affirmed, and the case was argued to the United States Supreme Court in Jan, 1997. The question presented was: "Did Washington's Natural Death Act of 1979, banning assisted-suicide, violate the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause by denying the liberty to choose death over life?"

The decision reversed a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that a ban on physician assisted suicide embodied in Washington's Natural Death Act of 1979 was a violation of the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause. The court asserted that because assisted-suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest, it was therefore not protected under the 14th Amendment. As previously decided in Moore v. East Cleveland, liberty interests not "deeply rooted in the nation's history" do not qualify as being a protected liberty interest. Assisted-suicide had been frowned upon for centuries and banned in a majority of the states.

In addition, the court felt that the ban was rational in that it protected patients from medical malpractice. The ban prevented others from convincing terminally ill patients to end their lives due to prejudice. It also prevented those from ending their lives simply due to financial or psychological complications.

Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion for the court. Five other opinions were written.