Court Rejects Use of Peyote as a Religious Right

The Supreme Court ruled today there is no constitutional right to take the hallucinogenic drug peyote as a religious practice.

The justices, voting 6-3, said Oregon officials may deny unemployment benefits to two fired drug counselors who ingested small amounts of peyote in Indian religious ceremonies.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said the First Amendment does not permit people to break the law in the name of religious freedom.

“We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting the conduct that the state is free to regulate,” he said.

Oregon’s drug laws do not “regulate religious beliefs, the communication of religious beliefs or the raising of one’s children in those beliefs,” Scalia added.

In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Harry A. Blackmun accused the court of treating religious freedom for the first time as a “luxury” rather than “an essential element of liberty.”

He was joined by Justices William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall.

Scalia’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White, John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor provided the sixth vote to deny the unemployment benefits to the fired drug counselors. But she said in a separate concurring opinion that the five other justices in the majority went too far in limiting religious freedom.

Peyote is a cactus “button” containing the hallucinogen mescaline.

Lawyers for Galen W. Black and Alfred C. Smith said using small quantities of peyote in a church service is comparable to sacramental use of small quantities of wine in Christian religious ceremonies.

But state officials said that if peyote is permitted in church ceremonies it will create a wedge for allowing other drugs, such as marijuana, to be used by other religious groups.

Oregon officials also argued that creating an exception for peyote would be a violation of constitutionally required separation of church and state.

In another decision, the court made it more difficult for employers to withdraw recognition of a labor union representing striking workers after new employees are hired to break the strike.

Today’s 5-4 decision in a Texas case reversed a federal appeals court ruling that said the National Labor Relations Board must presume that strikebreakers oppose the strikers’ union.

“Replacements may in some circumstances desire union representation despite their willingness to cross the picket line,” Justice Marshall wrote for the court.