Baxter v. Montana
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| Court | Montana Supreme Court |
| Full case name | Robert Baxter, Stephen Speckart, M.D., C. Paul Loehnen, M.D., Lar Autio, M.D., George Risi Jr., M.D., and Compassion & Choices, Plaintiffs and Appellees, v. State of Montana and Steve Bullock, Defendants and Appellants |
| Argued | September 2 2009 |
| Decided | December 31 2009 |
| Citation(s) | MT DA 09-0051, 2009 MT 449 |
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| Judge(s) sitting |
Mike McGrath (recused) Associate Justices James C. Nelson, W. William Leaphart, Patricia O. Cotter, James A. Rice, John Warner, Brian Morris Justice Pro Tem District Judge Joe L. Hegel (sitting in place of McGrath) |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Leaphart, joined by Cotter, Warner, Morris |
| Dissent | Rice, joined by Hegel |
Baxter v. Montana, was a Montana Supreme Court case, argued on September 2, 2009, and decided on December 31, 2009, that addressed the question of whether the state's constitution guaranteed terminally ill patients a right to lethal prescription medication from their physicians. The Montana Supreme Court sidestepped the question of if medical aid in dying is guaranteed under Montana State Constitution, instead they ruled on narrower grounds that neither legal precedent nor the state's statute deem such assistance against public policy, i.e. illegal. Montana is one of six states and Washington DC where aid in dying is authorized including Montana, Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont.
The original lawsuit was brought by four Montana physicians (Stephen Speckart, C. Paul Loehnen, Lar Autio, and George Risi, Jr., M.D.s), Compassion & Choices and Robert Baxter, a seventy-six-year-old truck driver from Billings, Montana, who was dying of lymphocytic leukemia. The plaintiffs asked the court to establish a constitutional right "to receive and provide aid in dying". The state argued that "the Constitution confers no right to aid in ending one’s life." Judge Dorothy McCarter, of Montana's First Judicial District Court, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on December 5, 2008, stating that the "constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity, taken together, encompass the right of a competent terminally-ill patient to die with dignity." Baxter died that same day.
The Montana Attorney General appealed the case to the state supreme court. Oral arguments were heard on September 2, 2009.
Amicus briefs filed on behalf of those asking the court to grant the constitutional right to receive/provide aid in dying include human rights groups, women's rights groups, The American Medical Women's Association/American Medical Students Association, clergy, legal scholars, thirty-one Montana state legislators and bioethicists, among others.
Among the groups filing amicus briefs on behalf of the state were the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of the Family Research Council, Americans United for Life, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Catholic Medical Association.
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