Yeah, I was planning to discuss the Anna Nicole Smith case, but this one's substantially more interesting and significant.
In 1990, the Supreme Court decided
Employment Division v. Smith. The Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the
First Amendment does not exempt "religious" behavior from religion-neutral, generally applicable criminal laws. In particular, the Court ruled that states may criminalize religious peyote use by Native Americans.
Congress responded to
Smith by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 ("RFRA"). In an effort to reinstate the standard used in Free Exercise cases before
Smith, Congress decreed that:
Quote:
(a) In general
Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except as provided in subsection (b) of this section.
(b) Exception
Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—
(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.
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42 U.S.C. sec. 2000bb-1(a-b) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court later ruled that RFRA is unconstitutional as applied to the states, but the law remains binding on the federal government.
O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal ("UDV") is a small Christian sect that originated in Brazil and has 130 or so adherents in the U.S. Their religious practices include sacramental use hoasca tea, a substance made from two plants that grow only in Brazil.
Trouble is, hoasca contains dimethyltryptamine ("DMT"), a hallucinogenic drug deemed a Schedule 1 controlled substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act ("CSA"). The CSA criminalizes the manufacture, distribution or possession of Schedule 1 drugs except under very narrow circumstances.
The Customs Service seized a shipment of hoasca bound for the home of a UDV member in the U.S. Agents also searched the member's home and seized an additional thirty gallons of hoasca found therein.
The Ashcroft Justice Department, which did everything possible to raise drug law enforcement to the level of a holy war, threatened prosecution. UDV and several of its members filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, seeking an injunction against any criminal prosecutions or any government efforts to prohibit the church's importation, possession or use of hoasca. One of UDV's arguments is that religious practice rights granted by RFRA trump the criminal prohibition set forth in the CSA.
The trial judge granted UDV's request for a preliminary injunction and the government appealed. By a vote of 2-1, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
affirmed. In order to establish entitlement to a preliminary injunction, the plaintiff must prove "(1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of the case; (2) irreparable injury to the movant if the preliminary injunction is denied; (3) the threatened injury to the movant outweighs the injury to the other party under the preliminary injunction; and (4) the injunction is not adverse to the public interest." The court found that UDV presented evidence sufficient to support the trial judge's decision to grant an injunction.
The government argued that RFRA's "compelling governmental interest" standard was met. Three government interests -- protecting the health of UDV members, preventing diversion of hoasca for nonreligious uses and enforcing a treaty called the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances -- were sufficiently compelling to justify the federal government imposing a substantial burden on UDV's religious practices. The court of appeals disagreed. The first two asserted interests weren't established by the evidence presented at trial. As for the treaty, under which signatory nations agreed to prohibit use of drugs such as DMT for anything other than scientific and limited medical purposes, the court noted that treaties and federal statutes are co-equals in the hierarchy of laws. If a treaty and a statute conflict, the newest law controls. RFRA postdates the treaty by more that twenty years. Thus, enforcing the treaty cannot be considered a "compelling governmental interest" for RFRA purposes.
The Tenth Circuit granted en banc review of the three-judge panel ruling and ultimately
affirmed. The case is now pending before the Supreme Court. Oral argument was held on November 1. A discussion of the argument is available
here.
The constitutionality of RFRA doesn't appear to be at issue in this case. (In a 1997 case, Justice Stevens opined that RFRA violates the Establishment Clause because it grants religious folks advantages that atheists and agnostics don't have.) Although it's possible for the Court to avoid the merits by ruling that the lower courts applied the wrong preliminary injunction standard, that doesn't appear likely. The above-linked discussion of the oral argument seems to indicate that reactions of most Justices to the government's position range from skeptical to openly hostile. In all likelihood, the Court will affirm and send the case back to the trial court so it can run its normal course.