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Compassion Legal

We advocate for your right to quality care at the end of life.

Back to the End-of-Life Justice Center

Compassion Legal is your legal partner in navigating the final stages of life—ensuring your rights are protected and your choices respected. We believe that no one should have to fight alone for the care they want, need, and deserve.

Whether you're seeking help for yourself or a loved one, we are here to support you. Our team has helped families access medical aid in dying, resolve violations of advance directives, challenge unwanted treatments, and defend personal healthcare decisions from outside interference.

What We Do
What We Do
Help ensure your advance directive and end-of-life wishes are followed.
Provide legal assistance when hospitals or providers ignore your values.
Offer support in cases involving access to hospice, medical aid in dying, or refusal of treatment.
Work with your care team to ensure legally protected choices are honored.
Help you understand your rights and options at the end of life.
Who We Help
Who We Help
- Individuals and their loved ones facing end-of-life issues.
- Health care proxies and surrogates.
- Clinicians seeking to honor patient-directed care.
- People facing systemic barriers due to religion-based healthcare refusals or insurance denials.

Need Help?

If you or someone you love is struggling to get the care you want and deserve, we are here to help. Call us today, or use our legal intake form.

Note: We are not a general legal services provider. We focus on legal issues specifically related to end-of-life care and patient autonomy.

Our Team

Our experienced team of litigators work closely with our pro bono counsel to enforce and expand the rights of terminally ill people. Through our work in the courts, we fight to ensure that everyone can receive high-quality end-of-life care that is in line with their values, wishes and beliefs. In every case we are involved in, Compassion & Choices’ dedicated legal team prioritizes and seeks to advance patient-directed care.

Our Work

Patient Rights & Freedoms Justice Project

We’re ensuring that fully-informed patients are the decision makers in their own end of life care; that your decisions and plans are implemented

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End-of-Life Options Access Project

We’re protecting and expanding access to existing end-of-life options and rights. (VSED, treatment withdrawal, pain management).

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Healthcare Improvement & Accountability Project

We’re ensuring fully-informed, patient-directed care is the prevailing practice of end-of-life medicine and healthcare and that you have access to all end-of-life care and options through your health systems and care providers.

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Latest News

An advance directive ignored — and the fight for patient rights

August 21, 2025

Compassion & Choices is promoting increased awareness and use among emergency medicine professionals of patients’ advance directives, POLST forms and living wills.

Supreme Court decision puts end-of-life care access at risk

July 23, 2025

In a recent decision that could have far-reaching consequences for people facing serious illness, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the rights of Medicaid enrollees to challenge harmful restrictions on their healthcare options. The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, centered on whether individuals have the ability to enforce the Medicaid Act’s “free-choice-of-provider” provision…

U.S. Supreme Court’s Restrictions on Medicaid Beneficiaries’ Right to Sue is an Attack on Patients’ Rights

July 23, 2025

The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a troubling decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, ruling that Medicaid enrollees do not have the right to enforce the Medicaid Act’s “free-choice-of-provider” provision. The decision weakens the legal protections that allow individuals to challenge harmful state policies that cut off access to care. The case has…