Just over three years since legalizing assisted suicide in New Jersey, an effort by activists to expand the law to non-New Jersey residents was initiated. But U.S. District Court Judge Renée Marie Bumb ruled this week in Govatos v. Murphy that their complaint had no merit, and there is no federal right for non-residents to kill themselves, even with the help of New Jersey laws.
According to the judge, the residency requirement was one of “several safeguards” meant to “guide providers and protect vulnerable adults from abuse.” At issue in the suit was “the constitutionality of the Act’s residence requirement.”
The court opined that, consistent with the Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling in Glucksberg v. Washington, “the issue is whether the Constitution requires a state to extend to non-residents a non-fundamental privilege that it affords to its own residents … this Court concludes that the answer is no, the Constitution does not so require.”
The judge further noted that this appears to be the first case of its kind, and that no other federal court had opined on such a matter.
The pro-assisted suicide activist group that helped pass the New Jersey law, Compassion & Choices, regularly assures legislators that these “safeguards” will protect vulnerable people. But then it also pursues a strategy of tearing down “safeguards” after passage.
This “bait and switch” strategy, which many legislators recognize and reject, has been successful in Oregon and Vermont. Assisted suicide advocates view this decision in New Jersey as a mere “temporary setback” to their expansion efforts.
The lawsuit itself was brought by Compassion & Choices on behalf of two terminally ill people from Pennsylvania and Delaware, and claimed that the residency requirement of New Jersey’s law violated the “(1) the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, § 2; (2) the dormant Commerce Clause of Article I, § 8; and (3) the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”.
Judge Bumb disagreed, opining that “[t]he residence requirement makes sense: While medical aid in dying is permitted in New Jersey, it is indistinguishable from the criminal act of assisted suicide in neighboring states.”
New Jersey is a state centrally located along the eastern seaboard, near several states that have successfully resisted assisted suicide: Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, and more. Removing the residency requirement would quickly cause New Jersey to become a hub for people throughout the northeast to be killed.
