The Importance of the RFRA Decision

Rick is right about the importance and correctness of today's unanimous SCOTUS decision finding that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protected a sect's consumption of tea with a hallucinogen in it at their worship services.  The opinion, by Roberts, is brisk, clear, and makes all the right points necessary for RFRA to have real meaning in protecting religious freedom.  Here's the key passage:

Under the Government’s view, there is no need to assess the particulars of the UDV’s use or weigh the impact of an exemption for that specific use, because the Controlled Substances Act serves a compelling purpose and simply admits of no exceptions. . . .

RFRA, and the strict scrutiny test it adopted, contemplate an inquiry more focused than the Government’s categorical approach. RFRA requires the Government to demonstrate that the compelling interest test is satisfied through application of the challenged law "to the person"—the particular claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened.

That's the fundamental point: the court should look to whether granting an exemption for the particular exercise of religious conscience would create a serious problem (and thus implicate a compelling interest), not whether undermining the law as a whole would do so.  That's how RFRA ensures that there will be a balance between religious freedom and government interests: if the government could define its interest as uniform enforcement of the law, it would always win.  (For more expanded version of this argument, see this brief I co-wrote in the case.)  The Court nails this point dead center.

And its ruling will have a salutary effect, not only on cases involving RFRA itself (which limits the effect of federal laws on religious freedom), but also on cases involving the federal RLUIPA statute (cases involving zoning or landmarking laws burdening churches, as well as prisoner religious exercise claims), state versions of RFRA (in force in about a dozen states), and state constitutional provisions (in several other states) that have been interpreted to apply the "compelling interest" test.

Tom