Published August 5, 2026
On August 3, 2026, EPPC Scholars Eric Kniffin and Rachel N. Morrison submitted a public comment to the New York Department of Health in response to proposed regulations for New York’s new assisted suicide law. The proposed regulations establish reporting requirements for physicians who help their patients kill themselves. The proposal also states that death certificates must never recognize that a patient died from “self-administered medication for medical aid in dying” and medical providers must “correct[]” the death certificate and claim that the patient died from his or her “underlying terminal illness or condition.”
The scholars challenge the Department of Health’s claim that its proposal “does not overlap or conflict with any Federal legal requirements.” Their comment details four ways the New York assisted suicide law conflicts with federal and state laws that protect conscience rights, regulate assisted suicide, and protect the integrity of official documents:
1. Conflicts with federal civil rights and conscience protection laws.
“It is likely that many medical professionals would object to certifying a death certificate that intentionally omits the immediate cause of the patient’s death and … conclude that omitting such information amounts to ‘assisting’ in an assisted suicide.”
2. Conflicts with federal law that prohibits using federal funds for items and services connected with assisted suicide.
“A hospital or hospice operating on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement … cannot lawfully bill federal programs for the qualifying and counseling activity the [new assisted-suicide law] now compels it to perform.”
3. Conflicts with New York laws that make it illegal to falsify information on government forms.
Under New York’s assisted suicide law, a patient’s death certificate “‘will’ state that the ‘cause of death’ was the patient’s ‘underlying terminal illness or condition,’” but “[s]everal New York laws … prohibit making knowingly false statements on vital records and official documents.”
4. Conflicts with generally accepted standards and New York requirement for investigating “unnatural” deaths.
The “underlying terminal illness” requirement “also forecloses the independent role that New York law assigns to medical examiners and coroners, who have a separate statutory duty to investigate deaths that are, under generally accepted forensic standards, unnatural.”
More generally, the comment points out that the Department’s regulations do not help medical providers navigate a fundamental contradiction in the assisted suicide law:
There is no doubt that someone who kills himself or herself under the MAID Act intends to commit suicide …. The proposed form detailed in the MAID Act reads, in part, “I request … medication that will end my life.”
Yet … Section 2899-p(2) and the Department’s proposed Section 35.7 require a medical provider to omit this information from the patient’s official death certificate, even though CDC guidance, NYC’s forms, and New York law require that the “immediate cause” of death be recorded accurately. Nothing in the Proposed Rule acknowledges this conflict.
The scholars’ comment challenges the Department to address and provide guidance on these conflicts. As the United States Supreme Court has cautioned, a department or agency that fails to acknowledge laws protecting religious liberty “would certainly be susceptible to claims that [its] rules [are] arbitrary and capricious for failing to consider an important aspect of the problem.”
Eric Kniffin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he works on a range of initiatives to protect and strengthen religious liberty as part of EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project.
