Myers v. Schneiderman
| Decision Date | 07 September 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 77,77 |
| Parties | Sara Myers et al., Plaintiffs, Eric A. Seiff, et al., Appellants, v. Eric Schneiderman, & c., Respondent, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
2017 NY Slip Op 06412
Sara Myers et al., Plaintiffs, Eric A. Seiff, et al., Appellants,
v.
Eric Schneiderman, & c., Respondent, et al., Defendants.
No. 77
Court of Appeals of New York
Decided on September 7, 2017
Edwin G. Schallert, for appellants.
Anisha S. Dasgupta, for respondent.
Michael R. Aiello, et al.; New York State Catholic Conference; Not Dead Yet, et al.; New York Civil Liberties Union; Alan A. Pfeffer et al.; Agudath Israel of America; New York Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys; American Medical Student Association, et al.; Richard N. Gottfried, et al.; Betty Rollin, et al.; National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Vincent Bonventre, et al.; Unitarian Universalist Association, et al.; Compassion & Choices, amici curiae.
Per Curiam:
Plaintiffs ask us to declare a constitutional right to "aid-in-dying," which they define (and we refer to herein) as the right of a mentally competent and terminally ill person to obtain a prescription for a lethal dosage of drugs from a physician, to be taken at some point to cause death. Although New York has long recognized a competent adult's right to forgo life-saving medical care, we reject plaintiffs' argument that an individual has a fundamental constitutional right to aid-in-dying as they define it. We also reject plaintiffs' assertion that the State's prohibition on assisted suicide is not rationally related to legitimate state interests.
Plaintiffs filed the instant action against New York State's Attorney General and
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several District Attorneys,1 requesting declaratory and injunctive relief to permit "aid-in-dying," whereby a mentally competent, terminally ill patient may obtain a prescription from a physician to cause death. Plaintiffs request a declaratory judgment that physicians who provide aid-in-dying in this manner are not criminally liable under the State's assisted suicide statutes — Penal Law § 120.30 and § 125.15 (3)2. They further request an injunction prohibiting the prosecution of physicians who issue such prescriptions to terminally ill, mentally competent patients.
When the complaint was filed, plaintiffs included three mentally competent, terminally ill patients. Two of those plaintiffs have died, and the third is in remission. Plaintiffs also include individual medical providers who assert that fear of prosecution has prevented them from exercising their best professional judgment when counseling and treating their patients. They are joined by organizational plaintiff End of Life Choices, which sued on its own behalf and on behalf of its clients, for whom it provides "information and counseling on informed choices in end of-of-life decisionmaking."
The Attorney General moved to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that plaintiffs failed to state a cause of action and did not present a justiciable controversy (see CPLR 3211 [a] [7], [2]). Supreme Court granted the motion, and plaintiffs appealed. The Appellate Division modified on the law, declaring that the assisted suicide statutes provide a valid statutory basis to prosecute physicians who provide aid-in-dying and that the statutes do not violate the State Constitution, and as so modified, affirmed (140 AD3d 51, 65 [1st Dept 2016]). Plaintiffs appealed to this Court as of right, pursuant to CPLR 5601 (b) (1).
On appeal, plaintiffs argue that the State's assisted suicide statutes do not prohibit aid-in-dying as a matter of law, and that the Appellate Division's "literal" interpretation of the statutes is flawed. Alternatively, plaintiffs contend that application of the assisted suicide statutes to aid-in-dying violates their equal protection and due process rights under the State Constitution.
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"On a motion to dismiss pursuant to CPLR 3211, the pleading is to be afforded a liberal construction" (Leon v Martinez, 84 NY2d 83, 87—88 [1994], citing CPLR 3026). "We accept the facts as alleged in the complaint as true, accord plaintiffs the benefit of every possible favorable inference, and determine only whether the facts as alleged fit within any cognizable legal theory" (id.). "However, 'allegations consisting of bare legal conclusions, as well as factual claims inherently incredible or flatly contradicted by documentary evidence are not entitled to such consideration'" (Simkin v Blank, 19 NY3d 46, 52 [2012], quoting Maas v Cornell Univ., 94 NY2d 87, 91 [1999]; see Connaughton v Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., 29 NY3d 137, 142-143 [2017]).
We reject plaintiffs' argument that the lower courts improperly resolved numerous factual issues. This case involves questions of law, including: whether aid-in-dying constitutes assisted suicide within the meaning of the Penal Law; whether a competent terminally ill person has a fundamental right to physician-assisted suicide; and whether denying a competent, terminally ill patient aid-in-dying violates that patient's right to equal treatment under the law. As there are no countervailing reasonable interpretations, these questions can be decided without any factual development.
Plaintiffs initially assert that we should interpret the assisted suicide statutes to exclude physicians who provide aid-in-dying. Such a reading would run counter to our fundamental tenets of statutory construction, and would require that we read into the statutes words and meaning wholly absent from their text (see Majewski v Broadalbin-Perth Cent. Sch. Dist., 91 NY2d 577, 583 [1998]).
"The governing rule of statutory construction is that courts are obliged to interpret a statute to effectuate the intent of the Legislature, and when the statutory language is clear and unambiguous, it should be construed so as to give effect to the plain meaning of the words used" (People v Finnegan, 85 NY2d 53, 58 [1995] [internal quotation omitted]). "[C]ourts may not reject a literal construction [of a statute] unless it is evident that a literal construction does not correctly reflect the legislative intent" (Matter of Schinasi, 277 NY 252, 259 [1938]).
"Suicide" is not defined in the Penal Law, and therefore "we must give the term its ordinary and commonly understood meaning" (People v Ocasio, 28 NY3d 178, 181 [2016] [internal quotations omitted]). Suicide has long been understood as "the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally" (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary [11th ed 2003]; see Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language [ed 1828]). Black's Law Dictionary defines "suicide" as "[t]he act of taking one's own life," and "assisted suicide" as "[t]he intentional act of providing a person with the medical means or the medical knowledge to
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commit suicide" (10th ed 2014). Aid-in-dying falls squarely within the ordinary meaning of the statutory prohibition on assisting a suicide.
The assisted suicide statutes apply to anyone who assists an attempted or completed suicide. There are no exceptions, and the statutes are unqualified in scope, creating an "irrefutable inference . . . that what is omitted or not included was intended to be omitted or excluded" (People v Jackson, 87 NY2d 782, 788 [1996] [internal quotation omitted]). Furthermore, this Court previously resolved any doubt as to the scope of the ban on assisted suicide. In People v Duffy, we explained that "section 125.15 (3)'s proscription against intentionally causing or aiding a suicide applies even where the defendant is motivated by 'sympathetic' concerns, such as the desire to relieve a terminally ill person from the agony of a painful disease" (79 NY2d 611, 615 [1992], citing Staff Notes of the Commission on Revision of the Penal Law, Proposed New York Penal Law, McKinney's Spec. Pamph. [1964], at 339).
As written, the assisted suicide statutes apply to a physician who intentionally prescribes a lethal dosage of a drug because such act constitutes "promoting a suicide attempt" (Penal Law § 120.30) or "aid[ing] another person to commit suicide" (Penal Law § 125.15 [3]). We therefore reject plaintiffs' statutory construction claim.
Alternatively, plaintiffs claim that the assisted suicide statutes, if applied to aid-in-dying, would violate their rights under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of our State Constitution. We reject those claims.
A. Equal Protection
Plaintiffs allege that the assisted suicide statutes violate the State Equal Protection Clause because some, but not all, patients may hasten death by directing the withdrawal or withholding of life-sustaining medical assistance. Plaintiffs therefore contend that the criminalization of aid-in-dying discriminates unlawfully between those terminally ill patients who can choose to die by declining life-sustaining medical assistance, and those who cannot.
Our State's equal protection guarantees are coextensive with the rights protected under the federal Equal Protection Clause (see People v Aviles, 28 NY3d 497, 502 [2016]; Esler v Walters, 56 NY2d 306, 313—314 [1982]). In Vacco v Quill, the United States Supreme Court held that New York State's laws banning assisted suicide do not unconstitutionally distinguish between individuals (521 US 793, 797 [1997]). As the Court explained, "[e]veryone, regardless of physical condition, is entitled, if competent, to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical treatment; no one is permitted to assist a suicide. Generally, laws that apply evenhandedly to all unquestionably comply with equal protection" (id. at 800 [emphasis in original]). The Supreme Court has not retreated from that conclusion, and we see no reason to hold otherwise.
B. Due Process
In support of their due process argument, plaintiffs assert that their fundamental right to self-determination and to control the course of their medical treatment encompasses the right to choose aid-in-dying. They further assert that the assisted suicide statutes...
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