In a 6-3 vote, justices rejected a Bush administration effort to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.
The court said the 1997 Oregon doctor-assisted suicide law trumps federal power to regulate doctors. The Oregon law has been used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people.
The court rejected a Bush administration attempt to use a federal drug law to prosecute doctors for prescribing overdoses. Then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft said in 2001 that doctor-assisted suicide isn’t a "legitimate medical purpose."
