After a judge strikes down California’s End-of-Life Option Act, the state vows to fight back.

California’s End-of-Life Option Act already came back from death once before, and now it’s being tested again.

In 2015, state senators Bill Monning, D-Carmel, and Lois Wolk, D-Davis, pulled their bill before it could die in committee. The Legislature then convened for an extraordinary session on health, where they passed a carbon-copy of the bill, and Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law.

It was the use of that extraordinary session, after the regular session ended, that Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia cited in a May 15 decision overturning the law, siding with plaintiffs represented by the Life Legal Defense Foundation.

“They’re not going after the substance of the bill,” Monning says. “They’re focused on how we passed the law. They’re grasping at straws.”

In the first and only report to date, the California Department of Public Health reports that in the second half of 2016, 191 terminally ill patients received aid-in-dying drugs; of those, 111 patients died using them.

“We’ve had no complaints, no problems,” Monning says. “The only complaints we’ve gotten are that the requirements [to consult with two physicians 15 days apart] take too much time.”

The California Attorney General plans to appeal the ruling, and Ottolia’s decision won’t take effect at least until May 20, until a judge can determine whether the state’s case gives cause to delay overturning the law. That delay, Monning says, is a cause for concern: “My biggest fear is it will confuse people… Not only am I disappointed, I’m outraged.”