DENVER — Minnesota man Jeff McComas and two Colorado physicians filed a lawsuit against state leaders in May, challenging the residency requirement of Colorado’s medical-aid-in-dying law.
In January 2023, McComas was diagnosed with stage four adenocarcinoma cancer of the peritoneum, small intestine, and ileocecal valve.
“I call it gut cancer to people who don't like big words,” McComas said during a video interview from his home in Woodbury, Minnesota.
McComas, a husband and father, has been going through chemotherapy every two weeks since. Speaking in early June, he said he’s had 58 rounds so far.
“Back then I had a 10th grader, my daughter, and she and me had a really tough conversation,” he said, telling her he’d do everything he can to see her graduate. “And so it's not a zero chance I'll see you graduate. And that's when I was kind of thinking, ‘I'm not going to see her graduate.’ But here we are, two and a half years later, and she's graduating Monday.”
He and his daughter inked tattoos on their biceps together that read “It’s not zero.” He said that became a rallying cry.
But despite McComas pushing past his initial terminal prognosis, he confided that his time is still short.
“In January, it spread a little bit to the liver. I'm still doing chemotherapy, but my prognosis from here isn't really good,” he said. “My end is preordained to be cancer very soon.”
Minnesota doesn’t have a medical-aid-in-dying law on the books. Colorado is one of 12 jurisdictions–11 states and Washington, DC–that provide terminally ill adults with the option to end their life through physician-prescribed medication.
In Colorado, the 2016 voter-approved End of Life Options Act requires terminally ill individuals with a prognosis of six months or less to be a resident of the state of Colorado.
“I want medical aid in dying so I can choose the time and the place and the people that around me of my ending, which is coming. It's inevitable,” he said.
McComas said Colorado is the closest state to him in Minnesota with a medical-aid-in-dying law, but moving states isn’t a viable option.
“It'd be very, very disruptive at a time when we don't want disruption, we want peace and tranquility, and we want to enjoy each other, and I want to say my goodbyes up here in an appropriate way,” said McComas.
Because of Colorado’s residency requirement, McComas and two Colorado physicians filed a lawsuit against state leaders like Governor Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser, and the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).
The lawsuit contends that Colorado’s residency requirement in the End of Life Options Act violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment. The federal lawsuit was filed in the US District Court of Colorado on May 22. A scheduling conference is set for Aug. 21.
The offices for Governor Polis and Attorney General Weiser said they won’t comment on active litigation. The Department of Public Health and Environment did not respond to a request for comment.
Similar lawsuits filed in Oregon and Vermont were settled, according to the nonprofit Compassion & Choices, which pushes for end of life options legislation around the country.
According to the group, both Oregon and Vermont state legislatures ultimately removed the residency requirement from the bill’s language. Litigation is ongoing in New Jersey, the group said.
Dr. Barbara Morris, a patient advocate, physician, and geriatrician in Golden, is one of the two doctors attached to the lawsuit.
“If you think about it, and think about healthcare and as a physician, when I think about it, there's no other situation in which I'm restricted in the care I provide in Colorado to out of state residents,” Dr. Morris said. “I don't ask patients for their licenses or their leases or their utility bills to provide care.”
Dr. Morris didn’t help write the original Colorado law in 2016, but she said the residency requirement could have been added since Colorado was one of the only states with such a law at the time.
“I think originally, because these laws were new, there was concern about whether there would be an undue influx of patients into states,” she said. “But that never came to pass in any of the other states. And I think that those folks who thought there would be a problem. I think it was a sincere worry, but I don't think it's one that we really have any evidence would happen.”
Morris said she hopes Governor Polis and other state leaders agree to settle the case and avoid creating additional barriers for patients.
According to annual data compiled by CDPHE regarding the End of Life Options Act, the number of patients being prescribed aid-in-dying medication has been increasing since 2017.
In 2021, 218 patients were prescribed the medication. That number more than doubled to 510 in 2024. From 2017 to 2024, 1,200 patients have been prescribed the medication.
But only about 300 patients actually had aid-in-dying medication dispensed. Dr. Morris said this discrepancy is expected.
“Our numbers, we think, are probably similar to other states in that probably 30% of those patients who qualify and were prescribed will actually never take the medication, and that's for a variety of reasons,” she said.
“But one reason that really stands out for me is that the patients and their families will tell you how they feel to be respected and listened to, to know that the medication is available as an option if their suffering is so overwhelming and that is extremely important to them.”
Email Senior Reporter Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@koaa.com. Follow @brettforrestTV on X and Brett Forrest News on Facebook.
Backlash in Colorado as National Park Signs Urge Visitors to Report 'Negative' Views About America
The signage went up at National Parks sites nationwide per executive order, but Amache and Sand Creek descendants want history preserved. Just days after the new signs, a small act of defiance surfaced at Amache National Historic Site.
