Bryman v. Murphy, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 31732 (September 17, 2025) Bibas, Circuit Judge.
Judges: Before: BIBAS, MONTGOMERY-REEVES, and AMBRO, Circuit Judges.
Death brings good things to an end, but rarely neatly. Many terminally ill patients face a grim reality: imminent, painful death. Some may want to avert that suffering by enlisting a doctor’s help to end their own lives. New Jersey lets its residents make that choice—but only its residents. The Constitution lets it draw that line. States may keep certain goods and services in-state. Plaintiffs’ claims to the contrary are at best legally uncertain. Through the uncertainty, this much is clear: New Jersey has sound reasons to limit this grave choice to its own residents. Protecting vulnerable patients and their doctors (not to mention avoiding friction with other states) justifies the residency requirement under any applicable test.
When a law touches a fundamental privilege, courts scrutinize whether the law’s means fit its ends. Though we rarely do so on a motion to dismiss, this is the rare case because we have enough legislative facts to resolve the issue. To show that nonresidents are a “peculiar source of the evil” targeted by the law, the state must show both a “substantial reason” to treat outsiders differently and a “substantial relationship” between the difference in treatment and the state’s objective. Toomer, 334 U.S. at 398 (first quotation); Piper, 470 U.S. at 284 (second and third quotations).
In sum, New Jersey’s justifications are weighty, rooted in real dangers of extending doctorassisted suicide to nonresidents. And its response is well tailored to further those justifications. Even if it could have chosen a means narrower than excluding all out-of-staters, the Privileges and Immunities Clause requires only a “substantial relationship” between means and ends, not a perfect one. Piper, 470 U.S. at 284. The Act satisfies that standard.
The Act comports with the Equal Protection Clause. Residency classifications are not inherently suspect. See Hooper v. Bernalillo Cnty. Assessor, 472 U.S. 612, 618, 105 S. Ct. 2862, 86 L. Ed. 2d 487 (1985). They trigger heightened scrutiny only if they infringe on a fundamental right.
The Act faces only rational-basis review. Shielding doctors from liability, preventing interstate friction, protecting patients from insurers’ pressure, and preventing rash decisions made in agony or depression are all legitimate governmental interests, and the Act rationally furthers them.
Even neutral laws may be impermissibly protectionist if they burden interstate markets by regulating in-state products. Nat’l Pork, 598 U.S. at 377; Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advert. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 350-54, 97 S. Ct. 2434, 53 L. Ed. 2d 383 (1977); Gen. Motors Corp. v. Tracy, 519 U.S. 278, 298, 117 S. Ct. 811, 136 L. Ed. 2d 761 n.12 (1997). In those cases, courts ask if the law serves a legitimate local interest and if the burden on interstate commerce clearly outweighs the benefits. Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U.S. 137, 142, 90 S. Ct. 844, 25 L. Ed. 2d 174 (1970).
In our federal system, states are free to experiment with policies as grave as letting doctors assist suicide. Other states are free to keep it a crime. This novel option does not appear to be a fundamental privilege, let alone a fundamental right, that states must accord visitors. But even if we reframe it as one, New Jersey has good reasons to limit it to New Jerseyans: protecting doctors from prosecution, preventing friction with other states, guarding patients from coercion, and ensuring that their decisions are rational and considered. We will thus affirm the District Court’s dismissal.
• New Jersey permits assisted suicide.
• New Jersey limits the right to assisted suicide only to its only residents.
• The Court finds that New Jersey may limit assisted suicide to its own residents and New Jersey justifications are rooted in the real dangerous of extending doctor assisted suicide to non-residents.
• The equal protection clause is satisfied.
• There is no imposition of the dormant commerce clause either
• States are free to experiment with policies such as assisted suicide
