Cite as: 521 U. S. 793 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
interests,5 and concluded that "to the extent that [New York's statutes] prohibit a physician from prescribing medications to be self-administered by a mentally competent, terminally-ill person in the final stages of his terminal illness, they are not rationally related to any legitimate state interest." Id., at 731. We granted certiorari, 518 U. S. 1055 (1996), and now reverse.
The Equal Protection Clause commands that no State shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This provision creates no substantive rights. San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 33 (1973); id., at 59 (Stewart, J., concurring). Instead, it embodies a general rule that States must treat like cases alike but may treat unlike cases accordingly. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 216 (1982) (" '[T]he Constitution does not require things which are different in fact or opinion to be treated in law as though they were the same' ") (quoting Tigner v. Texas, 310 U. S. 141, 147 (1940)). If a legislative classification or distinction "neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class, we will uphold [it] so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end." Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 631 (1996).
New York's statutes outlawing assisting suicide affect and address matters of profound significance to all New Yorkers alike. They neither infringe fundamental rights nor involve suspect classifications. Washington v. Glucksberg, ante, at 719-728; see 80 F. 3d, at 726; San Antonio School Dist., 411 U. S., at 28 ("The system of alleged discrimination and the class it defines have none of the traditional indicia of suspectness"); id., at 33-35 (courts must look to the Constitution, not the "importance" of the asserted right, when deciding whether an asserted right is "fundamental"). These laws
5 The court acknowledged that because New York's assisted-suicide statutes "do not impinge on any fundamental rights [or] involve suspect classifications," they were subject only to rational-basis judicial scrutiny. 80 F. 3d, at 726-727.
799
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