Title: Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S.

872 (1990)
Oregon law prohibits the intentional possession of controlled substances such as peyote, a hallucinogen, unless
prescribed by a medical practitioner.

Respondents argue that the claim for a religious exemption must be evaluated under the balancing
test set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, , 374 U. S. 398, 374 U. S. 402-403 in which governmental actions
that substantially burden a religious practice must be justified by a compelling governmental interest.
This test was developed in the context of unemployment compensation rules that lent itself to
individualized governmental assessment of the reasons for the relevant conduct. However, the test is
inapplicable to an across-the-board criminal prohibition on a particular form of conduct.
The court held that the government's ability to enforce generally applicable prohibitions of socially
harmful conduct, cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious
objector's spiritual development, because to make an individual's obligation to obey such a law
contingent upon the law's coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State's interest is
"compelling" -- permits him, by virtue of his beliefs, "to become a law unto himself, thereby
contradicting both constitutional tradition and common sense; a constitutional anomaly producing a
private right to ignore generally applicable laws.