Religious use of psychedelics is largely thought to be bookended by two Supreme Court decisions. The first, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), rejected a constitutional exemption for Native American peyote use and held that the Free Exercise Clause does not require exemptions from neutral and generally applicable laws. Congress responded with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which requires strict scrutiny of federal government actions that substantially burden religion. The second decision, Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (2006), resulted from a RFRA claim brought by the União de Vegetal church against the Controlled Substances Act. RFRA, the Court explained, requires the government to justify application of the law “to the person.” Given the small size of the church, the lack of evidence of diversion, and the limited health risks from ayahuasca, it concluded that the government had no compelling interest in barring the church’s use of its sacramental tea.

The result was that psychedelic churches could seek individualized exemptions under RFRA, but constitutional law offered little additional protection. In the last decade, however, the legal and political landscape has changed dramatically. The Supreme Court has radically revised First Amendment doctrine, opening the door to novel constitutional arguments for exemption. At the same time, psychedelic use has moved from marginal spiritual communities into a political economy of commercialization, celebrity endorsement, and therapeutic culture.

These developments create opportunities for psychedelic churches. But they also generate tricky questions about what counts as religion, sincerity, and church membership. The emphasis on religion also comes at a cost: it prefers religious over non-religious motivation (whether therapeutic, spiritual, or recreational) and creates pressure on groups to identify as religious.

Background on Religious Exemption to Drug Laws

There is a misperception among psychedelic churches and religion law experts alike that O Centro created a blanket religious exemption for ayahuasca, or perhaps for ritual use of psychedelics more generally. But since O Centro, only a handful of small, syncretic religious groups that consume ayahuasca have received explicit legal exemption from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Others exist in what the movement frequently calls a legal gray area.

In 2009, the DEA created a petition process for religious exemptions from the CSA. Petitioners must provide detailed information regarding their beliefs, rituals, leadership structures, and practices. Investigators conduct a thorough review of sincerity, as well as the security processes for storing, testing, and disposing of controlled substances.

Churches complain that the process is expensive, opaque, and slow. Most groups are reluctant to file petitions because they must agree not to consume drugs while awaiting a decision. Groups have also struggled to establish their religiosity and sincerity, the predicates to RFRA and free exercise claims. For many years, the agency granted no petition.

At the same time, the government faces genuine difficulties in distinguishing bona fide religious groups from commercial, therapeutic, or spiritual activities. Consider Soul Quest’s petition to the DEA. The group offered religious retreats through its website, recruiting participants to use ayahuasca. The website, as many groups now do, advised users that it was exempt from the CSA.

Unconvinced of Soul Quest’s religiosity and sincerity, the DEA rejected the petition. It emphasized that Soul Quest was not associational. It did not require individuals who attended its retreats to profess any shared beliefs in its purported religious texts. And the membership was transient with little contact with Soul Quest beyond the consumption of ayahuasca. In the DEA’s view, Soul Quest looked more like a commercial enterprise than a religious community.

Courts too generally proved unsympathetic to religious liberty from drug laws. While courts otherwise rarely second-guess objectors’ religious sincerity, they often do so where drugs are involved. In United States v. Quintance, involving a marijuana church, a federal court questioned whether members shared any coherent religious framework beyond cannabis consumption itself. By contrast, the Church of the Holy Light of the Queen, an ayahuasca church in the Santo Daime tradition, received an exemption in part because it discouraged casual participation and forbade proselytizing, thus reducing diversion risks. As David Pozen explains, “courts’ reluctance to recognize additional exemptions to drug bans reflected, in part, their reluctance to recognize religious exemptions of almost any sort.”

The tide, however, may be turning. In the past few years, additional churches have won religious exemptions in court or through settlement with the DEA. In 2024, the Government Accountability Office recommended that the DEA improve its exemption process for psilocybin, a hallucinogen found in some mushrooms. And in 2025, the agency granted its first petition for exemption ever.

Developments in Religious Liberty Doctrine

Beyond RFRA, the Supreme Court is re-interpreting the First Amendment to favor (at least some) religious entities. Just as courts’ earlier reluctance to grant exemptions fueled their approach to psychedelic churches, contemporary shifts toward religious exemption may push courts and regulators to look more favorably on religious use of psychedelics. Religious objectors generally are increasingly winning in the courts. While the federal RFRA applies only to federal laws and thus leaves exempted religious communities vulnerable to state and local law enforcement, the revision of constitutional law presents opportunities for religious groups to carve out exemptions from federal, state, and local drug laws alike.

A. Exceptions Lead to Religious Exemption

Psychedelic churches may be able to exploit the Supreme Court’s new “most-favored-nation” doctrine. In Tandon v. Newsom (2021), the Supreme Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment requires strict scrutiny wherever the government treatsany comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise. To determine whether two activities are “comparable,” the Court said, demands looking to “the asserted government interest that justifies the regulation at issue.”

This holding raises a host of questions about how broadly courts should look for exemptions and what it means for secular and religious exemptions to “comparably” undermine the government’s interests. What is clear, however, is that under Tandon, if a church can identify statutory or regulatory exemptions, a court may be convinced to engage in strict scrutiny or even to truncate review to issue a religious exemption.

Tandon may become increasingly important in litigation against state drug laws. These laws can contain a range of exemptions for medical, research, and law enforcement purposes. Partial decriminalization regimes also may reinforce arguments for religious exemption. For example, the city of Denver effectively decriminalized the personal use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms. Oregon voters adopted a similar approach but also established a program that allows clients to purchase, possess, and consume psilocybin under the supervision of licensed facilitator. Neither permits distribution of psilocybin within religious groups. Under the logic of Tandon, psychedelic churches may argue that these secular exceptions undermine the government’s asserted interests in drug control and trigger a constitutional obligation to grant comparable religious exemptions.

Related First Amendment doctrine may similarly aid psychedelic churches. In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021), the Supreme Court treated discretionary systems of individualized exemptions as constitutionally suspect. It concluded that rational basis review under Smith does not apply where government officials have broad discretion to grant exemptions.

Psychedelic churches might build a challenge to the CSA based on its provision authorizing the Attorney General to “waive the requirement for registration of certain manufacturers, distributors, or dispensers if he finds it consistent with the public health and safety.” At his discretion, waiver may be granted for secular, but not religious reasons. The existence of the waiver both acknowledges that not all distribution of controlled substances presents serious health and safety risks and suggests that discretion may equally be exercised in favor of religion without harming governmental interest.

B. Emphasis on Denominational Discrimination

The Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission invites claims under the Establishment Clause instead. There, the Supreme Court decided that Wisconsin’s unemployment compensation system violated the Establishment Clause by drawing lines that benefited some religions, but not others, along theological lines. The law exempted only those nonprofits that operated primarily for religious purposes and were controlled by a church. Catholic Charities did not qualify because it did not proselytize or serve co-religionists but rather provided secular services like job training to the general public.

The Court held that the government could not distinguish between religions that proselytize and those that do not. To do so would unconstitutionally “establish a preference for certain religions based on the content of their religious doctrine, namely how they worship, hold services, or initiate members, and whether they engage in those practices at all.”

After Catholic Charities, psychedelic churches might raise denominational discrimination under the Establishment Clause in several contexts. First, they might contest how the DEA prefers churches that do not proselytize. There is a plausible claim of denominational discrimination where the agency exempts those religious groups that require all those attending ceremonies to believe particular dogma and denies exemption to those that spread the word to all comers.

Second, this analysis could permit psychedelic churches to challenge the IRS’s approach to identifying churches for eligibility for tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status. The IRS provides a long list of characteristics, one of which is that the entity not engage in illegal activities. As a rule, psychedelic churches cannot meet this factor. They could therefore make a colorable argument that the IRS definition violates the Establishment Clause by preferring certain religions over others. Whereas religious groups that use wine in their rituals gain 501(c)(3) status, those communities that consume ayahuasca or mushrooms may not.

The Political Economy of Psychedelics

While the legal landscape has evolved toward religious exemption, psychedelic drug use has undergone a boom. Influencers and biohackers advocate for psychedelics as tools for spiritual development or health benefit. Billionaires and private equity have flooded markets with investments. And Americans are interested. A recent study estimates that 2.8% of Americans consumed psilocybin in the last year. Even ayahuasca, which had not had a recreational component, is drawing increased attention and celebrities who tout their experiences.

While it is difficult to know how many psychedelic churches exist, their numbers have increased in recent years. Many people now encounter and consume psychedelics through religious or spiritual retreats. They may not, and likely do not, share any particular religious perspective on the use of those drugs. Groups now range from small congregations that hold regular worship services and have long traditions to what look more like online retailers of drugs or “an Uber Eats for narcotics.” Consider Zide Door Church in Oakland, California. Over 135,000 members have consumed drugs from its “sacrament room.” The sacrament room contains various controlled substances, from joints and marijuana gummies to psilocybin in various forms. In order to access one of these sacraments, an individual must make a “cash donation” to the church. As a result of this commercialization, despite the expanding religious exemption doctrine, psychedelic users are likely to continue to confront skepticism about their religiosity and sincerity.

Beyond ayahuasca and peyote, other psychedelic drugs may prompt greater consternation from regulators and judges. MDMA and marijuana, for example, widely appeal to secular users and thus present higher risk of diversion than drugs like ayahuasca or peyote. As one advocate said tongue-in-cheek, “ayahuasca is definitely religious, because we know it’s not fun.” The government’s interest in universal compliance with regard to other drugs will weigh heavier.

In this environment of religious opt out, freedom of and from religion also suffers. Legal doctrine may drive spiritual and therapeutic groups to adopt religious identity. Commerce may be dressed up in religious garb. As lawyer Victoria Litman says, even within the world of religious drug use, people believe that some are forming sham churches in an attempt to reduce the risk of law enforcement. Psychedelic churches have often expressed frustration at having to fit the model of Christian practices. Psychedelic use may also become secularized in ways that undermine genuine religious rituals.

Conclusion

For years, Smith and O Centro appeared to define the legal terrain: constitutional law generally did not require exemptions from drug laws, but RFRA might entitle particular churches to individualized accommodations. In the past decade, religion clause doctrine has been rewritten to favor objectors. Once confined to a slow and unsatisfying petition process through the DEA, religious psychedelic users have new avenues and arguments to challenge the application of federal, state, and local laws. Nonetheless, the political economy of psychedelic use—combining big business and spirituality—seems likely to give courts and regulators pause.

Elizabeth Sepper holds the Crillon C. Payne, II Professorship in Health Law at the University of Texas School of Law. She is a nationally recognized scholar of religious liberty, health law, and equality, and she has written extensively about conflicts over reproductive healthcare and religion.