Alfred Smith and Galen Black, members of the Klamath tribe and counselors at a private drug rehabilitation clinic, were fired in 1983 for having ingested peyote as part of a Native American church religious ceremony. Although the federal government and 23 states permitted the use of peyote for religious rituals at the time, the state of Oregon did not.
Both counselors filed a claim for unemployment compensation with the state, which was denied due to what the state deemed work-related "misconduct." The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, holding that denying Smith and Black unemployment benefits for their religious use of peyote violated their right to exercise their religion. The Oregon Supreme Court agreed, although it relied not on the fact that peyote use was a crime but on the fact that the state's justification for withholding the benefits—preserving the "financial integrity" of the workers' compensation fund—was outweighed by the burden imposed on Smith's and Black's exercise of their religion. The state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, again arguing that denying the unemployment benefits was proper because using peyote was a crime.
In a decision delivered on April 17, 1990, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against the men’s claim that Oregon's law barring peyote use under all circumstances violates their religious freedom. Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing for the majority, said that the First Amendment freedom of religion does not allow individuals to break the law. "We have never held that an individual's beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law,” wrote Scalia, adding that there need not be a “compelling state interest” before it enforces its laws in a way that puts a burden on a particular religious group. "To permit this," Scalia argued, "would make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."
What a turnabout, then, for the Supreme Court in 2014 to rule that that a corporation may exempt itself from the contraceptive mandate, a regulation adopted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Affordable Care Act, on the grounds that compelling a corporation to comply with the federal regulation would violate the corporation's religious beliefs. Yesterday’s ruling could have widespread impact on the issue of whether corporations - or indeed anyone - can be religiously exempt from any federal law that protects the interests of other individuals.
The vote was 5-4. Voting with the majority: Justice Antonin Scalia. Yes, the very same defender of the Constitution who 24 years ago warned us that it would be "courting anarchy” to create exceptions every time a religious group claims that a law infringes on its practices. He was right then; he's a supreme hypocrite today.