Gov. Peter Shumlin signs the updated physician-assisted suicide bill at a store owned by Katy Lesser, the sister of Maggie Lake, who used a lethal prescription to end a long battle with cancer earlier this year. Photo by Erin Mansfield/VTDigger
Christian Medical and Dental Associations, Inc., based in Tennessee, is suing along with the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, Inc. The two filed a civil suit in U.S. District Court in Rutland this week.
The defendants are the director of the Vermont Medical Practice Board, the members of the Vermont Medical Practice Board, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation.
The lawsuit argues that Act 39 violates the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech and religion, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides equal protection under the law.
The lawsuit also asks the court to say Act 39 violates the Vermont Constitution and Vermont’s Administrative Procedures Act; to pay all legal fees of the two organizations; and to permanently block Vermont’s physician-assisted suicide law.
A federal court ruling for the plaintiffs would nullify Vermont’s physician-assisted suicide law.
The Christian groups announced the lawsuit in a news release Wednesday. Chris Winters, the deputy Secretary of State, and David Herlihy, the executive director of the Vermont Medical Practice Board, both declined comment. Neither have been served court papers.
Vermont’s physician-assisted suicide law, Act 39, allows patients who are terminally ill to obtain a prescription from a doctor to end their own lives. The law sets out a complex process to ensure the person does not have mental health issues.
Passed in 2013, the law allows health professionals who are uncomfortable with prescribing life-ending drugs to instead refer patients to a doctor who are willing to do so. The law was scheduled to sunset in 2016, but the Legislature decided to extend it last year.
Two Christian groups say in the suit that because doctors are required to offer patients a referral, they are participating in physician-assisted suicide and therefore violating their consciences.
“(Act 39) is nothing but the redefinition of “palliative care” to mean providing assisted suicide, an intolerable position for Plaintiffs and other healthcare professionals with conscientious objections to participating in this practice,” the lawsuit says.
Steven Aden, the lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said: “The government shouldn’t be telling health care professionals that they must violate their medical ethics in order to practice medicine.”
“These doctors and other health care workers deeply believe that suffering patients need understanding and sound medical treatment, not encouragement to kill themselves,” Aden said. “The state has no authority to order them to act contrary to that sincere and time-honored conviction.”
Vermont is one of four states with a physician-assisted suicide law.
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