Legal Work
Compassion & Choices' legal advocacy team, which litigates patient cases related to ensuring adequate end-of-life care and choice, represented 16 terminally ill patient-plaintiffs at the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Oregon, defeating the Bush administration challenge to Oregon's Death with Dignity Act in January 2006.
Through litigation, Compassion & Choices works for terminally ill patients' rights to receive pain and symptom management, to voluntarily stop life-sustaining treatments, to request and receive palliative sedation, and to choose aid in dying under state and federal constitutional protections. Kathryn Tucker is legal affairs director for Compassion & Choices.
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