O’Melveny’s Efforts for Terminally Ill Cancer Patients Result in New CA Law

California’s End of Life Option Act (EOLOA) became law in 2016, the culmination of efforts by a group O’Melveny attorneys and the non-profit Compassion & Choices. The new law provides for “aid in dying,” a process by which a terminally ill person who is close to death may obtain a prescription for and self-ingest a substance that will cause that person to die quickly and painlessly. Before the EOLOA, California Penal Code Section 401 prohibited doctors from providing a prescription for such medication—even for self-administration—on the basis that doing so would aid a suicide.

O’Melveny attorneys filed suit in the Superior Court in San Diego to protect access to “aid in dying” measures and ensure the constitutionality of the law. Although the case was ultimately unsuccessful, it raised awareness of the need for legislative action to provide a humane end-of-life option for terminally ill patients. The court’s order said the case “cries out for a legislative fix, not a judicial nix.”

Compassion & Choices used this order to convince the California Legislature to address the issue during a special legislative session in the fall of 2015. The EOLOA resulted, and then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law.