News Intelligence Analysis
From the NY Times
February 22, 2006
Supreme Court Roundup
Sect Allowed to Import Its Hallucinogenic
Tea
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 - A unanimous Supreme Court decision on
Tuesday gave a small religious sect the right to keep importing
a hallucinogenic tea,
central to its ritual observance, that the government wants to
ban as a
controlled substance under federal narcotics law.
With an opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the
decision was one
of the most significant applications of the Religious Freedom
Restoration
Act, a 13-year-old federal statute that requires the government
to meet a
demanding test before it can enforce a law in a way that creates
a
substantial obstacle to religious observance.
The government failed to carry its burden under the statute,
Chief Justice
Roberts said in an opinion that not only rejected the administration's
specific arguments but also dismantled its theory of the case.
The chief
justice said the government's "bold argument" that
the Controlled
Substances Act, the basic federal narcotics law, "simply
admits of no
exceptions" could not be reconciled either with the religious
freedom law
or with administrative practice under the act itself.
For the past 35 years, he noted, the government has permitted
American
Indians to use peyote in their religious rituals despite the
fact that
peyote and its active ingredient, mescaline, are banned for general
use
under the Controlled Substances Act and have been found by Congress
to be
dangerous substances with a high potential for abuse.
Referring to the sect at issue in this case by its initials,
U.D.V. (the
full name is O Centro Espirita Beneficente União Do Vegetal),
Chief Justice
Roberts said that if peyote was permitted despite those findings
"for
hundreds of thousands of Native Americans practicing their faith,
it is
difficult to see how those same findings alone can preclude any
consideration of a similar exception for the 130 of so American
members of
the U.D.V. who want to practice theirs."
To the government's argument that the "unique relationship"
between the
United States and Indian tribes justified the different treatment,
the
chief justice replied that "nothing about the unique political
status of
the tribes makes their members immune from the health risks"
or other
problems the government has attributed to the use of banned narcotics.
The tea, known as hoasca, is made from two plants found only
in the Amazon
rain forest. Its active ingredient is dimethyltryptamine, usually
referred
to as DMT.
The 8-to-0 decision, with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. not
participating
because he was not on the court when the case was argued Nov.
1, affirmed a
preliminary injunction that two lower federal courts had granted
to block
further government seizures of the tea.
Followers of the church, which is based in Brazil, sued the
government
under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1999 after customs
agents
seized a shipment of the tea bound for the group's American headquarters
in
New Mexico.
Both the federal district court in Albuquerque and the United
States Court
of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, agreed that the group's
130
members were entitled to the preliminary injunction so they could
maintain
access to the tea while awaiting a full trial on the merits of
their case.
The administration then appealed to the Supreme Court.
In a technical sense, the government is still entitled to
try to make its
case at trial because the preliminary injunction was all that
was before
the Supreme Court in the case, Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita
Beneficente
União Do Vegetal, No. 04-1084. But the court's rejection
of the
government's position was so conclusive that the chance of a
different
outcome after a trial appears remote at best.
In his second Supreme Court opinion, Chief Justice Roberts
employed a
jargon-free, almost conversational style, using only two footnotes
in the
opinion's 19 pages. For example, he wrote at one point: "The
government's
argument echoes the classic rejoinder of bureaucrats throughout
history: If
I make an exception for you, I'll have to make one for everybody,
so no
exceptions."
He then went on to say that the very point of the Religious
Freedom
Restoration Act was to require consideration, on a case-by-case
basis, of
claims to religious-based exemptions from laws of general applicability.
To the government's argument that judges should not devise
exceptions,
Chief Justice Roberts said that the statute "plainly contemplates
that
courts would recognize exceptions - that is how the law works."
In a 1998 decision, the court ruled on the grounds of states'
rights that
the Religious Freedom Restoration Act could not be applied to
the states.
But the court has not questioned its applicability to the federal
government.
There were also these developments, as the court returned
from a four-week
recess.
Military Commissions
The court deferred action on the administration's motion to
dismiss a case
challenging the constitutionality of the military commissions
the
government has established to try terrorism suspects now being
held at the
naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The justices agreed in November, over the administration's
objections, to
hear the case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, No. 05-184, and have scheduled
arguments
for March 28.
In December, Congress passed and President Bush signed the
Detainee
Treatment Act, sometimes referred to as the Graham Amendment,
which removed
from the federal courts jurisdiction to hear challenges brought
by
Guantánamo detainees to their confinement and treatment.
It is an open question whether that law divested the Supreme
Court of
jurisdiction to proceed with the Hamdan case. The administration
is arguing
that it did, while lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Yemeni
who brought
the case, argue that it did not.
The court said it would consider the issue as part of the
March 28
argument, not before, and added 30 minutes to the one-hour argument
for
that purpose.
Job Discrimination
In an unsigned, unanimous opinion, the court ruled that the
federal appeals
court in Atlanta had adopted an incorrect standard in rejecting
a racial
discrimination lawsuit brought against Tyson Foods Inc. by two
black
employees.
The two men, Anthony Ash and John Hithon, sought promotions
that went
instead to two white men who, the plaintiffs maintained, were
less
qualified. A jury found for the plaintiffs.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled
for Tyson,
finding that one of the men had not presented sufficient evidence
of
discrimination and that the company was entitled to a new trial
in the
other case.
A plaintiff could win such a case, the appeals court said,
only when "the
disparity in qualifications is so apparent as virtually to jump
off the
page and slap you in the face."
In vacating this ruling, the Supreme Court said the test was
"unhelpful and
imprecise." Without insisting on a particular formulation,
the justices
told the appeals court to consider other courts' approaches.
The justices also said the appeals court was incorrect to
discount a Tyson
manager's use of the word "boy" as possible evidence
of racial
discrimination. The case was Ash v. Tyson Foods, Ind., No. 05-379.
Sentencing
The court re-entered the debate it ignited six years ago over
the
appropriate role for judges in criminal sentencing.
It agreed to hear a case from California on whether that state's
sentencing
law, which presumes that judges will issue a sentence in the
middle of a
stated range but permits them to go higher if they state reasons,
complies
with the court's recent insistence that juries make the factual
findings
that lead to increased sentences.
The case, Cunningham v. California, No. 05-6551, could affect
thousands of
sentences in that state as well as in others.
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