The long running legal battle to permit Mrs Terri Schiavo to die took another turn last week when Pinellas County Circuit Judge W Douglas Baird ruled on 6 May that Governor Jeb Bush's so called “Terri's law,” enacted to permit reinsertion of the patient's feeding tube, which had been removed, was unconstitutional.
Mrs Schiavo, aged 40, had been the focus of a bitter legal battle since her cardiac arrest in 1990 followed by persistent vegetative state (BMJ 2003;327:949, 1010).
In his 23 page decision, Judge Baird, who Governor Bush had earlier asked to remove himself from the case, said that “Terri's law” was unconstitutional because it gave legislative power to the governor and because it unjustifiably authorised the governor to summarily deprive Florida citizens of their constitutional right to privacy.
He wrote that “authorizing the Governor to exercise unbridled discretion in making the ultimate decision regarding the life or death of a private Florida citizen, without standards, direction, review, or due process protection of that citizen's private desires, exceeds any reasonable concept of 'least intrusive means.'”
Judge Baird also ruled that the law violates the principle of separation of powers that prohibit one branch of government from interfering with another's duties. In this case, Governor Bush had no right to overrule years of court litigation that led to the decision to remove the feeding tube.
Ken Connor, the former head of the conservative Family Research Council, who is a leading lawyer for the governor, said that he expected the case would eventually be decided by the state Supreme Court and could even end up in federal court.
Howard Simon, Florida's executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union, called Judge Baird's ruling a “strong affirmation of the privacy rights of the people of the state of Florida.”
Kenneth Goodman, director of the University of Miami's bioethics programme, said the judge's ruling was an “antidote to legislative civil disobedience.”
He called “Terri's Law” “one of the darkest days of the Florida legislature” and said lawmakers cynically injected themselves into a family's tragedy to score votes with a well organized [right to life] movement.
Governor Bush plans to appeal the case to the state's Second District Court of Appeal in Lakeland, Florida.
The legal battle is being closely followed nationwide by partisans on both sides of the right to die issue. President George Bush, the brother of Governor Bush, has already said that he supports his brother's intervention in the Schiavo case.