Kathryn Tucker JD
Kathryn Tucker, JD, is Special Advocacy Advisor at the National Psychedelics Association. For more than 30 years she has engaged advocacy to protect and expand the rights of the terminally ill.
She founded and served as Executive Director of the End of LifeLiberty Project, Executive Director of the Disability Rights Legal Center, the nation’s oldest disability rights advocacy organization, and Director of Advocacy and Legal Affairs for Compassion & Choices.
Tucker has held faculty appointments at Loyola/ Los Angeles, University of Washington, Seattle University and Lewis & Clark, Schools of Law, teaching “Law, Medicine and Ethics at the End of Life” and “Psychedelic Law and Policy.”
Tucker served as lead counsel representing patients and physicians in two landmark federal cases decided by the United States Supreme Court, Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill, asserting that mentally competent terminally ill patients have a constitutional right to choose medical aid in dying. These cases are widely acknowledged to have prompted nationwide attention to improving care of the dying, and to have established a federal constitutional right to aggressive pain management. Tucker played a key role in successfully defending the Oregon Death with Dignity Act from attack by the United States Department of Justice, resulting in the landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court, Oregon v. Gonzales, representing the patient plaintiffs.
Tucker has been leading the public interest impact advocacy to open access to psilocybin assisted therapy for those with life-threatening conditions under Right to Try laws(AIMS v DEA), and the effort to reschedule psilocybin off of schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.
Tucker was part of the team that succeeded in enacting the nation’s first state law permittingpsilocybin therapy (Oregon Measure 109, 2020) and more recently was involved in the successful legislative effort to pass the New Mexico Medical Psilocybin Act. Tucker represents plaintiffs in a case pending in federal court in Oregon to ensure that homebound disabled and dying Oregonians are able to have reasonable accommodation to access psilocybin services under the Oregon Psilocybin Services Act. (Cusker et al v OHA).
Tucker is also a longtime student, practitioner and teacher in the Ashtanga Yoga tradition. She weaves her work in end of life law and policy with her yoga teaching, offering the workshop: Preparing for the Final Asana: Law and Medicine at the End of Life and What Yoga Has to Offer, at leading retreat centers across North America.
