The lawsuit claims that patients with life-threatening disabilities will likely face pressure from insurance companies, which may be more inclined to recommend death than expensive and time-consuming treatment.
A recently-filed federal lawsuit is challenging an Illinois “right-to-die” law.
According to The Chicago Tribune, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of two disabled patients, a doctor, and a coalition of non-profit organizations. In court documents, attorneys say that the state’s End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act “upends millennia of protections for Illinois patients in their relationships with their doctors by ending the ethical obligation to do no harm.”
The Act, signed into law by Gov. Pritzker in 2025, gives terminally ill patients—defined as those expected to live no more than six months from the date of a consultation or diagnosis—the right to request life-ending prescription medication. It also authorizes doctors to dispense such medication when appropriate.
The lawsuit names defendants including state Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois Department of Health, and the department’s director, Dr. Sameer Vohra. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that the new law violates multiple federal statutes, ranging from the Americans with Disabilities Act to the Affordable Care Act.
The Tribune notes that a similar lawsuit was also filed in New York, which approved right-to-die legislation that is scheduled to take effect in August of this year.
“Assisted suicide laws in New York and Illinois create a separate and unequal system in which people with life-threatening disabilities are offered death instead of the support programs everyone else gets,” said Matt Valliere, president and executive director of the Institute for Patients’ Rights, a named plaintiff in the complaint. “These legal actions 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.”
The Illinois lawsuit alleges that the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act represents a fundamental challenge to the doctor-patient relationship, whereby physicians take an oath to “do no harm.”
“EOLA embarks on this reckless experiment with no guardrails and no adequate legal framework to prevent the erroneous taking of life,” the lawsuit says. “Without any such safeguards, or objective parameters for eligibility, there will be an inevitable evolution from EOLA’s ‘right to die’ to a ‘duty to die’ for individuals whose disabilities are a costly burden or who lack the resources for extended medical care.”
The lawsuit also asserts that patients with life-threatening disabilities will likely face pressure from insurance companies, which may be more inclined to recommend death than expensive and time-consuming treatment.
Dr. Nooshing Luz Salvador, a named plaintiff in the case, said that the options presented by EOLA could lead overwhelmed patients to make ill-considered decisions, even in instances where effective options for palliative care are available.
“In her own experience and expert medical opinion, such individuals often upon receiving a devastating diagnosis have no adequate warning of the diagnosis and are in a state of shock,” the lawsuit alleges. “They may also be under the care of surgeons who are inadequately trained to communicate end-of-life options that will ease suffering and protect a genuine quality of life for such patients.
Sources
Disability rights advocates file lawsuit over Illinois’ ‘dangerous’ right-to-die law
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