Clergy, Catholic physicians sue to block Illinois assisted suicide law

A group of Catholic doctors and clergy say the Illinois End-of-Life Options Act runs afoul of the physician's oath to "do no harm."CHICAGO (CN) — A group of Catholic doctors and clergy filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday afternoon in an effort to stop the enactment of an Illinois bill that legalizes assisted suicide.Illinois End-of-Life Options Act, signed by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker in December 2025, allows qualified patients to request a physician to prescribe them medication that will allow them to end their life in a peaceful manner.But the plaintiffs write in their 73-page complaint that the legislation runs afoul of doctors’ oath to “do no harm.”Qualified patients must be over the age of 18, and have a terminal illness that will result in death within six months. The legislation allows the patients to administer the medication themselves, and also requires physicians to inform patients about all end-of-life care options, including comfort care, hospice, palliative care and pain control.The law, which is set to go into effect on Sept. 12, also requires Illinois physicians to outline the benefits of the aid-in-dying medication, even if they conscientiously object it.The plaintiffs say the bill violates their First Amendment right to free speech because it “improperly regulate[s] speech on the basis of content and viewpoint, and the state has lesser restrictive means for accomplishing its interests than Orwellian speech mandates, such as a public-information campaign without imposing its viewpoint on plaintiffs.”The four Catholic doctors also say the law puts them between a rock and a hard place, and violates the First Amendment’s protections for religious freedom.“Put simply, requiring only a narrow class of ‘health care professionals’ to discuss the ‘benefits’ of and ‘refer’ for assisted suicide with respect only to ’terminally ill’ patients, contrary to those professionals’ deeply held religious beliefs, is neither neutral nor generally applicable,” they write.Aside from the legislation’s First Amendment violations, the plaintiffs say it also runs afoul to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the government from defining statutory terms contrary to their ordinary meaning in a way that deprives persons of fair notice of the law’s scope and allows for arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.“Doctors also must lie on death certificates by hiding that at least one of the underlying causes of the patient’s death was lethal substance obtained pursuant to EOLO,” the plaintiffs write. “And they must refrain from giving patients undefined ‘intentionally misleading’ information — ostensibly including the provision of information on available end-of-life treatment options that does not**include assisted suicide or its supposed ‘benefits.’”The plaintiffs maintained that because the legislation fails to define what qualifies as “intentionally misleading” information, it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s ban on undue vagueness.The law requires physicians to list qualified patients’ cause of death as their underlying terminal illness on their death certificate; they are not to list the patient’s cause of death as a suicide, nor are they allowed to note that a patient took the aid-in-dying medication. The prescribing physicians are required to keep detailed records of a qualified patient’s death, from the moment they request the medication until 60 days after they’ve passed, although those records are not public.Illinois is one of 14 states where assisted suicide is legal, and a handful of other states are currently considering similar measures, according to Death With Dignity, a non-profit organization that advocates for freedom of choice in end-of-life options.The plaintiffs noted in their complaint that in other states where assisted suicide is legal, practitioners are not required to counsel patients about purported benefits of the medication.Oregon was the first state to legalize physician-assisted death in 1994 and subsequently faced a slew of legal challenges including 2006 Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Oregon, which determined that the federal Controlled Substances Act does not forbid doctors from prescribing aid-in-dying medications that are valid under state law.The Illinois law was initially proposed in 1997, after the Supreme Court ruled in Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill that a state’s ban on physician-assisted suicide did not violate the Constitution.The bill was brought back up in the Illinois legislature in 2024, but it failed to get past the Senate. It finally passed in 2025 and is also known as Deb’s Law, which is in honor of lifelong Illinois resident Deb Robertson, who has a rare terminal illness and heavily advocated for the bill.Categories / UncategorizedSubscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads