Filed: March 2nd, 2026

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

Overview: Amicus brief explaining that people with disabilities face pervasive bias and discrimination in health care. Physician-assisted suicide laws are one manifestation of that historic discrimination.  People with disabilities should not be coerced into physician-assisted suicide because their lives are deemed less valuable than those without disabilities. Delaware’s physician-assisted suicide law has few safeguards to protect people with disabilities, and the law violates the spirit and letter of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Excerpt: “Laws authorizing assisted suicide do more than create a new medical option—they carve disabled people out of longstanding legal protections against abuse, neglect, and homicide, while simultaneously denying them equal access to the full force of state suicide-prevention efforts. . . Physician-assisted suicide poses particular and grave risks to people with intellectual disability, who have long faced discrimination, devaluation, and unequal treatment in medical and social systems. As recognized by Amicus The Arc, safeguards embedded in assisted suicide statutes are insufficient to protect people with intellectual disability from coercion, bias, and systemic pressures that can shape life-ending decisions.”

Case Documents:

• Curran Amicus Brief
• Curran Case Explainer