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12 

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

respect  to  Schedule  I  substances  should  not  carry  the 
determinative  weight,  for  RFRA  purposes,  that  the  Gov-
ernment would ascribe to them. 

And in fact an exception has been made to the Schedule 
I  ban  for  religious  use.   For  the  past  35  years,  there  has
been a regulatory exemption for use of peyote—a Schedule 
I  substance—by  the  Native  American  Church.  See  21 
CFR  §1307.31  (2005).    In  1994,  Congress  extended  that 
exemption  to  all  members  of  every  recognized  Indian 
Tribe.  See 42 U. S. C. §1996a(b)(1).  Everything the Gov-
ernment says about the DMT in hoasca—that, as a Sched-
ule  I  substance,  Congress  has  determined  that  it  “has  a 
high potential for abuse,” “has no currently accepted medi-
cal  use,”  and  has  “a  lack  of  accepted  safety  for  use  . . . 
under  medical  supervision,”  21  U. S. C.  §812(b)(1)—
applies  in  equal  measure  to  the  mescaline  in  peyote,  yet 
both  the  Executive  and  Congress  itself  have  decreed  an 
exception  from  the  Controlled  Substances  Act  for  Native
American religious use of peyote.  If such use is permitted 
in  the  face  of  the  congressional  findings  in  §812(b)(1)  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  excep-
tion for the 130 or so American members of the UDV who 
want to practice theirs.  See Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, 
Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 547 (1993) (“It is established 
in  our  strict  scrutiny  jurisprudence  that  ‘a  law  cannot  be 
regarded as protecting an interest ‘of the highest order’ . . . 
when  it  leaves  appreciable  damage  to  that  supposedly
vital  interest  unprohibited’ ”  (quoting  Florida  Star  v. 
B. J. F.,  491  U. S.  524,  541–542  (1989)  (SCALIA,  J.,  concur-
ring in part and concurring in judgment))). 

The  Government  responds  that  there  is  a  “unique  rela-
tionship”  between  the  United  States  and  the  Tribes,  Brief 
for  Petitioners  27;  see  Morton  v.  Mancari,  417  U. S.  535 
(1974),  but  never  explains  what  about  that  “unique”  rela-