(Monday, Feb. 27, 2006)
Last week, in Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao Do Vegetal, the Supreme Court held that U.S. members of a Brazilian-based Christian Spiritist Sect had a right to use a hallucinogenic tea called hoasca for religious purposes. The Court so ruled notwithstanding the fact that hoasca is a Schedule I substance with no medical or otherwise accepted use.
Crucial to the reasoning of the unanimous opinion, authored by Chief Justice Roberts, was the Court's determination that the government bore the burden of showing that permitting a religious exception to the prohibition would undermine compelling governmental objectives.
The Court's decision appears to indicate that the Justices are more receptive to claims of religious freedom now than they were just sixteen years ago, when they issued a landmark ruling in a case involving a different hallucinogenic drug--peyote--rejecting a claimed right to use the drug for religious purposes. [...] In the hoasca case, the Court formally left Smith intact as the constitutional rule. Yet, at the same time, the Court appeared to reject the core logic of Smith, as Justice Scalia explicated it. Thus, these issues will likely return to the Court before too long.
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