HIGH COURT HEARS CASE ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Washington - The Supreme Court debated Tuesday whether to let a small
congregation in New Mexico worship with hallucinogenic tea, the first
religious freedom dispute under Chief Justice John Roberts.

Retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor seemed skeptical of the Bush
administration's claim that the tea should be banned, but she may not be
around to vote in the case if President Bush's nominee to replace her,
Samuel Alito, is confirmed by the Senate.

About 130 members of a Brazil-based church have been in a long-running
dispute with federal agents who seized their supply of hoasca tea in 1999.
The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred
to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal.

The Bush administration contends the tea is not only illegal but
potentially dangerous.

The Supreme Court has dealt with religious drug cases before. Justices
ruled 15 years ago that states could criminalize American Indians' use of
peyote, a cactus containing hallucinogenic mescaline. But Congress changed
the law to allow its sacramental use in tribal services.

O'Connor cited that congressional action Tuesday, interrupting the Bush
administration lawyer in his opening statement and peppering him with
difficult questions.

Roberts suggested that the Bush administration was demanding a too-strict
"zero tolerance approach."

Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the 1990 peyote opinion, said the tribes'
use of peyote was "a demonstration you can make an exception without the
sky falling."

The religious tea case could take months to decide, and Alito could be
called on to vote if justices are divided 4-4 on the case when O'Connor
leaves the court.

"It's not clear how he would rule," said Anthony Picarello, president of
the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. "Normally religious freedom cases
are tricky to predict. This one is especially tricky."

The hoasca tea had been imported from Brazil, and Bush administration
lawyer Edwin Kneedler told justices that the drug not only violates a
federal narcotics law, but a treaty in which the United States promised to
block the importation of drugs including DMT.

If there is an exception, he said, other countries could back off the
international war on drugs, citing lax U.S. enforcement of the treaty.
Kneedler noted that the peyote used by Native Americans is grown in the
United States.