An organization "End Assisted Suicide," representing a number of disability advocacy groups, filed suit in Colorado on Monday, June 30, alleging that the state's assisted suicide law is discriminatory against the disabled.
The groups in the coalition include Atlantis ADAPT, United Spinal, Not Dead Yet, Institute for Patients' Rights, as well as an individual plaintiff who is an anorexia patient.
Assisted suicide has been legal in Colorado since 2016, however, in June 2024 Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed SB 68, the "End-of-Life Options Act," which changed the eligibility criteria for assisted suicide.
The new law allowed for certain nurses to prescribe lethal medication for a patient, reduced the waiting period between requests for assisted suicide from 15 days to seven days, and allowed for medical professionals to waive the waiting period if a patient is not expected to live for more than 48 hours.
This law, said the coalition behind the lawsuit in a press release published June 30, violates the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, as well as the Americans With Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
Assisted suicide laws, said Matt Valliere, the president and executive director of Institute for Patients' Rights, "create a separate and unequal system in which people with disabilities are offered death instead of support."
"This lawsuit is about affirming that every person's life has value, regardless of age, ability, or diagnosis, and that no one should be treated as disposable under the law," he added.
One of the lawyers in the case pointed out that while assisted suicide is in theory limited to "terminal" diagnoses, in Colorado, patients with treatable conditions such as anorexia are "regularly" offered drugs to end their lives.
This is further complicated, said the suit, now that a person who is not a doctor can prescribe lethal drugs to a patient so they can end their lives.
"Rather than offering suicide prevention and robust mental health care, the state is steering vulnerable patients who could otherwise live, to death by suicide," said Michael W. Bien, a lawyer at Rosen, Bien, Galvan and Grunfeld LLP and legal counsel for the case.
