Compassion in Dying v. Washington

AMENDED ORDER

An active judge sua sponte requested that the full court rehear this case en bane. The request failed to receive a majority of the votes of the non-recused active judges. The request is rejected.

dissenting from order rejecting request for rehearing en banc by the full court:

By promulgating a new constitutional right, one unheard of in over two hundred years of American history, six men and two women — endowed with life tenure and cloaked in the robes of this court — have enacted by judicial fiat what the people of the State of Washington declined to do at the polls only five years ago. 1 By our failure to convene the full court to rehear this case, a mere one-third of the twenty-four active judges 2 eligible to vote has been empowered to strike down criminal laws, not just in Washington, but in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, and Montana, as well as in Idaho *1441 and Nevada to the extent they criminalize assisted suicide through common law, as they currently do. Because our failure to rehear this ease as a full court permits a minority of our court to nullify the public will without adequate justification, I must respectfully dissent.

I

The Ninth Circuit…