Judge declines to block Illinois’ ‘medical aid in dying’ law ahead of Sept. 12 start
A federal judge on Thursday declined to block Illinois' new “medical aid in dying” law from going into effect this weekend, clearing the way for terminally ill adults to legally seek life-ending medication from physicians.
The End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, or EOLA, was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in December after a two-year legislative push.
It is restricted to adults who have less than six months to live, as determined by two separate physicians. In addition to a mandated waiting period, patients must undergo an evaluation finding they are able to self-administer the drugs, have the mental capacity to make the decision and are not being coerced.
The law also prohibits doctors from broaching the subject without the patient first bringing it up.
A group of disability rights advocates, patients and a doctor sued to halt the law ahead of its Sept. 12 effective date, claiming EOLA will lead physicians to push their disabled patients toward what opponents refer to as “assisted suicide.”
In courtroom arguments last week, a lawyer for the plaintiffs alleged the law will result in the “severe impairment” of the relationship a patient with disabilities has with their doctors and is tantamount to discrimination.
But U.S. District Judge John Tharp rejected those arguments, writing in his order Thursday that lead plaintiff Ebony Payne, a Chicago resident who is paralyzed from the neck down and suffers from severe asthma, failed to prove she will suffer irreparable harm when the law goes into effect.
“Ms. Payne’s intangible injuries rest on her speculation that physicians in Illinois will decide, en masse, to abandon their existing duties to their patients,” the judge wrote. “She has not persuaded the Court that this is anything other than speculation.”
Disability rights advocates and religious groups, particularly those affiliated with the Catholic Church, fought against the EOLA in 2024 and 2025. The statute is also referred to as “Deb’s Law,” named for former social worker Deb Robertson, a Lombard resident living with an aggressive case of neuroendocrine carcinoma.
Illinois is not the only state where disability rights advocates have challenged medical aid in dying laws in court; a similar coalition filed a lawsuit to block New York's law on the same day in June, but a federal judge dismissed the case in July and the law went into effect last month.
EOLA, like other states' medical aid in dying laws, is modeled after Oregon's 1997 statute, but Illinois is the first Midwestern state to legalize life-ending medication for terminal patients.
Legal arguments
Thomas Geoghegan, an attorney representing Payne and the other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, argued to Tharp on Friday that a physician who prescribes lethal medication to a patient represents the upending of the Hippocratic oath, a millennia-old pledge doctors make to “first do no harm.”
But the judge countered Geoghegan's impassioned courtroom assertion that “this is not medicine” with the language of the law, which defines life-ending medication as “part of general medical care.” Tharp pointed to the examples of three patients cited in the law, “one still living and two who have died, who wished for Illinois to permit” medical aid in dying “so that they could avoid suffering and pain during their final days.”
“Under this view, providing end-of-life care promotes the duty to 'do no harm' rather than erases it because failing to alleviate pain and suffering would itself be a cause of harm,” the judge wrote.
Plaintiffs also claimed EOLA doesn't have strong enough oversight from the state to ensure that doctors aren't cutting corners or coercing their patients into choosing lethal medication over palliative care, despite the law's mandate on discussing the pros and cons of all end-of-life options with their patients.
But Tharp didn't buy that argument either, reasoning that the plaintiffs “cannot show that doctors will act 'predictably' in response to the Act because of the broad discretion it gives doctors.” The judge pointed to “an entire section” of the law that spells out physicians' rights to decline participating in prescribing life-ending drugs — and not face any discipline for their choice.
Payne, who attended last week's arguments wrapped in a blanket in her wheelchair, said in a statement Thursday that she is “disappointed” in Tharp's ruling, maintaining it “removes the duty of physicians in Illinois to 'do no harm' and sets up a system where a physician can assist in killing a patient without oversight or accountability.”
Tharp gave plaintiffs 30 days to make their arguments for why the case shouldn't be dismissed altogether.
In a separate challenge to EOLA filed last month by religiously affiliated healthcare systems and doctors, another federal judge in Chicago approved a temporary restraining order agreed to by all parties. The stipulated TRO exempts the plaintiffs from having to discuss lethal medication with patients until the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decides a case concerning similar themes.