Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente União do Vegetal (2006)

In Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente União do Vegetal (UDV) the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision granting an American branch of the UDV a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), thereby temporarily protecting the UDV's religious use of a hallucinogenic brew known as hoasca. Gonzales v. UDV was the first major court case to recognize legal protections for the religious use of a hallucinogen under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and also the first case to recognize the right of a religious group to use a hallucinogen other than peyote in religious ceremonies.

The UDV is a Christian Spiritist sect based in Brazil that combines elements of Christianity with local indigenous cosmologies and rituals, including the use ...