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Page Number: 7.0

2 

GONZALES v. O CENTRO ESPIRITA BENEFICENTE 
UNIAO DO VEGETAL 
Opinion of the Court 

§2000bb–1(b).  The District Court granted the preliminary 
injunction,  and  the  Court  of  Appeals  affirmed.  We 
granted  the  Government’s  petition  for  certiorari.    Before 
this Court, the Government’s central submission is that it 
has a compelling interest in the uniform application of the
Controlled  Substances  Act,  such  that  no  exception  to  the 
ban  on  use  of  the  hallucinogen  can  be  made  to  accommo-
date the sect’s sincere religious practice.  We conclude that 
the  Government  has  not  carried  the  burden  expressly 
placed  on  it  by  Congress  in  the  Religious  Freedom 
Restoration  Act,  and  affirm  the  grant  of  the  preliminary
injunction. 

I 
In  Employment  Div.,  Dept.  of  Human  Resources  of  Ore. 
v.  Smith,  494  U. S.  872  (1990),  this  Court  held  that  the 
Free  Exercise  Clause  of  the  First  Amendment  does  not 
prohibit  governments  from  burdening  religious  practices 
through  generally  applicable  laws.    In  Smith,  we  rejected
a  challenge  to  an  Oregon  statute  that  denied  unemploy-
ment  benefits  to  drug  users,  including  Native  Americans 
engaged in the sacramental use of peyote.  Id., at 890.  In 
so  doing,  we  rejected  the  interpretation  of  the  Free  Exer-
cise Clause announced in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 
(1963),  and,  in  accord  with  earlier  cases,  see  Smith,  494 
U. S.,  at  879–880,  884–885,  held  that  the  Constitution 
does  not  require  judges  to  engage  in  a  case-by-case  as-
sessment  of  the  religious  burdens  imposed  by  facially 
constitutional laws.  Id., at 883–890. 

Congress  responded  by  enacting  the  Religious  Freedom 
Restoration  Act  of  1993  (RFRA),  107  Stat.  1488,  as
amended,  42  U. S. C.  §2000bb  et  seq.,  which  adopts  a 
statutory  rule  comparable  to  the  constitutional  rule  re-
jected  in  Smith.  Under  RFRA,  the  Federal  Government 
may  not,  as  a  statutory  matter,  substantially  burden  a 
person’s  exercise  of  religion,  “even  if  the  burden  results