Ashcroft’s last hurrah struck down
When John Ashcroft resigned in 2004, he pushed a court case right into the lap of the Supreme Court. He was challenging a 1997 Oregon law that made it legal for doctors to administer or prescribe lethal doses of medical to terminally ill patients. Oregon citizens passed the law twice. Ashcroft decided that he knew better than all the voters in Oregon and brought the might of the Federal Government to bear on the doctors, essentially saying that Federal prescription laws control what doctors can or cannot do regardless of the state law.
Today, Ashcroft has lost that particular argument as the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the Federal Government has no business in this state law.
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