A group of Catholic physicians and a bishop filed a lawsuit against the state of Illinois on Tuesday, challenging the state’s assisted suicide law.
The End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act, signed into law by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker in December 2025, allows terminally ill people to secure medication and end their lives. The law comes into effect on Sept. 12 this year. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, took issue with the bill’s rules for state physicians when dealing with people seeking assisted suicide.
According to the bill, the attending physician is obliged to inform the patient about potential risks and benefits of self-administering the medication that would bring about death. In case a healthcare professional is unwilling to carry out a person’s request for aid in dying, they must refer the individual to another professional who is “able and willing,” the bill said.
None of the plaintiffs in the case—four physicians, one bishop, and a Lutheran nursing facility—“can in good conscience comply” with the requirements of the bill, the lawsuit said.
“Their basic commitment to preserving patient health, along with their shared Christian faith, compels them to use all reasonable means to save life and tell the truth. Accordingly, they sincerely object both morally and religiously to facilitating assisted suicide in any way,” the complaint said, adding that this was consistent with the Hippocratic Oath of doing no harm to patients and refraining from advising patients on how to commit suicide.
“Plaintiffs thus cannot and will not comply with compelled speech mandates to promote the so-called ‘benefits’ of assisted suicide as a legitimate ‘treatment option’ even for ‘terminally ill’ patients or refer them to a third party for the specific purpose of intentionally killing themselves,” the lawsuit said.
The Act’s requirements pose a risk of “career-ending” civil, administrative, and criminal consequences for healthcare professionals, according to the complaint. It forces plaintiffs to either violate their faith or, if they choose to hold to their faith, end up violating state law, the lawsuit said.
As such, the lawsuit said that the Act threatens to punish and potentially force plaintiffs and like-minded healthcare professionals to move out of Illinois, and this would harm the patients in the state who would require the care of these professionals.
The Roman Catholic Bishop in the case, from the Diocese of Springfield, is charged with enforcing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. The directives “explicitly forbid” Catholic facilities from taking part in assisted suicide in any manner and from offering any referrals for the same, the lawsuit said.
“Illinois’s conscription of objecting practitioners into its new assisted suicide regime blatantly violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” the complaint said.
It accused the Act of breaching the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause, right of expressive association, and protection for the free exercise of religion.
The lawsuit asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction enjoining the defendants from enforcing the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act.
The complaint was filed against Sameer Vohra, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, and Mario Treto Jr., secretary of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Meanwhile, the bill clarifies that generally, a healthcare entity or licensing board shall not subject a healthcare professional to suspension, censure, discipline, loss of membership, loss of license, or other penalties for engaging with the Act in good faith compliance.
A professional shall also not be subject to criminal or civil liability for taking part in or refusing to participate in providing aid-in-dying care to a patient in compliance with the Act, according to the bill.
Assisted Suicide US Status
According to an Aug. 5 update from end-of-life advocacy group Death with Dignity, assisted suicide is legal in the District of Columbia and 13 statesؙ—California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
One of the most recent states to allow assisted suicide is New York. The state’s Department of Health announced last week that its Medical Aid in Dying Law came into effect on Aug. 5. The Act allows terminally ill New Yorkers who have less than six months of life left to request medication to end their lives.
The American Medical Association rejects physician-assisted suicide. In its Code of Medical Ethics, the association said that allowing physicians to engage in such acts would end up causing more harm than good.
“Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks,” the group said.
The association recommended that instead of assisting in suicides, physicians should strongly respond to the needs of patients at their end of life, which includes providing good communication and emotional support, and offering adequate pain control and appropriate comfort care.
