Court Opinion

ID: 9481192
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:10:57.63127+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:09.135226
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision affirming the district court’s dismissal of the constitutional attack on a federal regulation and Texas law that criminalize possession and use of peyote but exempt members of the Native American Church from such possession and use in religious services. I would hold that the exemptions violate „the constitutional bar against making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.”
Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith permitted Oregon’s general criminal prohibition on the use of peyote to be enforced against members of the Native American Church who ingested peyote as a religious sacrament. The Court held the criminal statute of general applicability did not constitute a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The Court’s decision necessarily upholds the underlying regulatory and statutory bans imposed by the federal government and the State of Texas that are involved here. The majority agrees with this interpretation of Smith.
Where we part company is over whether the exemption in the federal regulation and the Texas statute constitute a law “respecting an establishment of religion.” The sole function of the exemption is to permit the Native American Church to worship in a way that violates the constitutionally validated prohibition of peyote use for any purposes. In my view, the fact that the impetus for the exemption arose from the federal government’s paternalistic interest in American Indians and the “me too” view of Texas cannot convert this purely religious exemption into a political one. This exemption is nothing more or less than a law respecting an establishment of religion, barred by the plain words of the first phrase of the first amendment.
Holding the exemption granted in the regulation and statute to be unconstitutional eliminates the need to reach the majority’s equal protection analysis. However, I do not regard the issue here as one controlled by Morton v. Mancari. Authentication of preferential hiring of Indians in the Bureau of Indian Affairs is no authority to make a law respecting an establishment of religion. Because the exemption has only a purely religious purpose, the equal protection analysis should subject the exemption to the same level of equal protection scrutiny applied to any other law creating a preference for only one sect’s religious practice.
I do agree with the majority’s affirmance of the district court’s denial of injunctive relief. Peyote Way wants the unconstitutional exemption, but not the constitutional ban, extended to it. This, of course, cannot be. Holding the Native American Church *1221exemption unconstitutional gives Peyote Way no right to enjoin enforcement of the valid provisions of the regulation and law criminalizing the use of peyote in religious practices. Whether the exemption is sever-able is an unbriefed question for another day in another case.
Because I would reverse the district court’s judgment holding the exemption constitutional, I respectfully dissent.