Rare Alliance Asks Court to Reconsider Drug Ruling

An unusual coalition of religious groups has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision allowing states to outlaw the use of illegal drugs as a religious practice.

“I seriously doubt these groups have ever been in the same room together, much less have ever joined in so important an undertaking,” Oliver Thomas of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs told reporters Thursday.

The April 17 high court ruling said members of the Native American Church had no constitutional right to take the hallucinogenic drug peyote during religious ceremonies.

Officials from the American Jewish Congress, the National Assn. of Evangelicals and the National Council of Churches also participated in a news conference held after the petition for rehearing was filed with the court.

Others supporting the petition included the Presbyterian Church USA, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, American Friends Service Committee, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Christian Legal Society.

Religious leaders were more disturbed by the court’s method of deciding the case than by the decision’s bottom line.

Five members of the 6-3 court majority agreed that religious beliefs cannot excuse failure to comply with “otherwise valid laws prohibiting conduct states are free to regulate.”

Departing from a long series of prior cases, the court did not require states to have a “compelling reason” before forcing someone to comply with laws interfering with religious beliefs.

The court’s new reasoning, said Robert P. Dugan Jr. of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, “effected a sea change in freedom-of-religion law.”

Henry Siegman of the American Jewish Congress said that if the decision remains, “all Americans . . . will have reason to feel less free and more vulnerable under our Constitution.”

The court rarely grants requests for reconsideration, and Thomas acknowledged Thursday’s move was “a long shot.”

“Nevertheless, it is our only shot,” he said.