Multiple lawsuits filed in federal courts on June 11 allege that permissive assisted suicide laws in New York and Illinois are threatening the life and well-being of individuals with disabilities in those states.
Several individual plaintiffs and patients‘ rights groups filed the suits in two U.S. district courts arguing against the states’ respective laws that permit doctors to intentionally cause the death of patients deemed terminally ill, a process known as “medical aid in dying,” a term used in state law.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed the stateʼs assisted suicide bill into law in December 2025, while New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed her own stateʼs bill in February of this year. Both measures have been ardently opposed by Catholic leaders.
The Illinois suit — brought by two plaintiffs and several groups including the Institute for Patients’ Rights and the National Council on Independent Living — argues that the stateʼs law removes the “ethical obligation of every physician to do no harm,” nullifying a doctorʼs requirement to, in part, “actively prevent the patient from … suicide.”
The state is offering suicide as a “reasonable option” for medical patients, the suit argues, and permits suicide to be “encouraged by physicians.”
The New York law, meanwhile — which is scheduled to go into effect in August — presents a “looming threat” to individuals with disabilities, the lawsuit in that state says, in part because it does not require medical officials to “consider a patient’s psychiatric or psychological condition or how that may affect their suicidality” when they ask for help in dying.
The New York suit argues that the law will allow patients to obtain suicide assistance even if they are not suffering from terminal conditions; it further alleges that the law would allow patients to “make themselves eligible” for suicide by “declining available medical treatment.”
Both suits argue that the respective suicide regimes violate state and federal laws, including disability protection laws; the suits further claim that the rules violate equal-protection provisions under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Matt Vallière, president and executive director of the Institute for Patients’ Rights which is a party in both suits, said in a June 11 press release that the laws “create a separate and unequal system in which people with life-threatening disabilities are offered death instead of the support programs everyone else gets.”
The lawsuits “are about affirming that every person has inestimable value and dignity, regardless of age, disability, or prognosis, and ensuring that no one is treated as disposable under the law,” he said.
The filings are the fourth and fifth lawsuits filed as part of a national effort by the initiative End Assisted Suicide, a coalition group targeting state suicide laws on behalf of people with disabilities.
Catholic leaders in both states have sharply criticized the assisted suicide laws. New York Archbishop Ronald Hicks said this month that the stateʼs law would usher in a “new and frightening era” there.
“How long before this so-called ‘compassion’ for the terminally ill evolves from a ‘choice’ into an expectation to kill oneself for all sorts of vulnerable individuals, including those with disabilities, the elderly, and those in impoverished and medically underserved communities?” the prelate said.
The Illinois bishops, meanwhile, described their stateʼs assisted suicide law as a “dangerous and heartbreaking path.”
“Rather than investing in real end-of-life support such as palliative and hospice care, pain management, and family-centered accompaniment, our state has chosen to normalize killing oneself,” the bishops said.
