Supreme Court Sides With Church in Drug Case

By TChris, Section Court Decisions
Posted on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 09:11:11 AM EST
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by TChris

Last year, TalkLeft highlighted a conflict between the administration's desire to appease religious groups and its refusal to cede ground in its unyielding war against drugs. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect certain religious practices, including the ingestion of controlled substances, which would otherwise be illegal. The Supreme Court held that the Act can't trump state drug laws, but the administration argued that Congress also lacks the authority to enact a religious exception to federal laws that punish the possession of hoasca (which contains the hallucinogenic substance DMT).

The Court was asked to decide whether the Act protects members of the New Mexico branch of a Brazilian church who want to ingest hoasca "as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God." In a unanimous decision (Alito did not participate), the Court sided with the church.

In their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. In the decision, Roberts wrote that federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church and that the Bush administration had failed to meet its burden under a federal religious freedom law to show that it should be allowed to ban "the sect's sincere religious practice."

The administration's position is consistent with the simple-minded view advanced by the student counselor on South Park: "Drugs are bad, mmm-kay?" That approach allows for no exceptions. The Court was looking for a more nuanced analysis.

Chief Justice Roberts was skeptical of the government's position in the case last fall, suggesting that the administration was demanding too much, a "zero tolerance approach."

Zero tolerance isn't good enough to satisfy the demands of the RFRA, according to the decision authored by the Chief Justice.

Before this Court, the Government's central submission is that it has a compelling interest in the uniform application of the Controlled Substances Act, such that no exception to the ban on use of the hallucinogen can be made to accommodate the sect's sincere religious practice. We conclude that the Government has not carried the burden expressly placed on it by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and affirm the grant of the preliminary injunction.