A federal judge in Utah has ordered county law enforcement return psilocybin mushrooms that police seized from a Provo City-based religious group that uses the psychedelic fungi as sacrament.
District Judge Jill N. Parrish last month granted Singularism’s request for a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit, filed against Utah and Provo counties and one official. The group’s founder sued on constitutional grounds and under the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was passed last year and aims to protect religious practices from government interference.
“Laws like these further instantiate the guarantee of religious freedom so central to our republic,” Parrish wrote in the ruling. “But for that guarantee of religious liberty to mean anything, the laws must protect unfamiliar religions equally with familiar ones, both in design and in practice.”
“In this litigation,” she added “the religious-exercise claims of a minority entheogenic religion put the State of Utah’s commitment to religious freedom to the test.”
The order to return the psychedelics follows a raid last November of Singularism’s spiritual center, in which authorities seized the mushrooms as well as scripture, according to the ruling. Singularism sued in state court, and five days later, the state filed criminal drug charges against the religion’s founder, Bridger Lee Jensen.
“These criminal charges were accompanied by a flurry other aggressive and vexatious filings related to the case,” Singularism said in a press release, saying it views the charges against Jensen as “an act of retaliataion.”
While the latest ruling doesn’t affect those charges, it both returns the seized mushrooms and shows an example of Utah’s RFRA law in action.
Singularism said the judge’s action “is expected to have ripple effects across the country as other entheogenic religious groups cite this case in their own legal battles. The outcome could influence ongoing debates about the legal standing of psychedelic sacraments within the framework of the First Amendment and state- and federal-level RFRA protections.”
Parrish’s 38-page ruling granting the preliminary injunction touches on the history of Singularism and founder Jensen’s yearslong background of religious study. As it describes, Jensen is not a prophet in the religion but helps others “access their own spiritual insights through the psilocybin ceremonies.”
In the ruling’s legal analysis, Parrish wrote that plaintiffs Jensen and Singularism demonstrated that the government’s prohibition on psilocybin use and possession creates “a substantial burden on sincere religious exercise”:
“Simply put, Plaintiffs offer a sacramental psilocybin tea to their voyagers, who then embark on a spiritual journey by which they write their own scripture. A law that categorically prohibits the possession and use of the psilocybin sacrament—thereby preventing Singularism’s adherents from pursuing their spiritual voyages and hindering them from producing their sacred scripture—substantially burdens the free exercise of Singularism and its adherents.”
The judge rejected defendants’ claims that prohibition did not create a substantial burden on sincere religious exercise, writing that the arguments “amount to an assertion that Singularism is not what its adherents claim it is—in other words, that the government is best situated to interpret Singularism and its teachings.”
The court also rejected government lawyers’ argument that the religion’s adherents are insincere. “Based on all the evidence in the record, the court has no difficulty concluding that Plaintiffs are sincere in their beliefs and that those beliefs are religious in nature,” Parrish wrote.
“Mr. Jensen’s testimony about his past use of psychedelic drugs and desire to find safer ways of using them may at first support the inference that he conveniently founded Singularism as a religion to bypass the law and engage in otherwise-illegal drug use,” the ruling says. “However, the evidence as a whole weighs against this inference.”
Parrish wrote that “it admittedly looks suspicious at first that Singularism charges about $1,600 per tea ceremony (so given that two to four ceremonies is a standard package, members pay anywhere from $3,200 to $6,400 for participation),” but was similarly persuaded by plaintiffs, writing that “the full context strongly suggests that Singularism is driven by religious rather than purely financial considerations.”
“If Mr. Jensen were actually motivated by the promise of large profits, he would not have given up a stable six-figure salary to found Singularism and receive a monthly payment that barely puts him past the poverty line,” the order says, adding that a religious group making “large sums of money from its religious activities…does not necessarily mean that its free-exercise claims are disingenuous.”
As for the government’s assertions that laws against psilocybin serve public health, Parrish ruled that those arguments were insufficient to overcome Utah RFRA.
“Defendants initially argue that the psilocybin ban serves the government’s interests in preventing abuse, preventing possible harms from drug use such as suicidal ideation, and protecting the public from illicit drug trafficking,” she wrote. “The court does not doubt that these interests are compelling in the abstract, but the government must go beyond ‘broadly formulated interests’ like these to satisfy its burden.”
The February ruling orders the government “to return any items seized from Singularism’s spiritual center not yet returned” and “to not interfere with Plaintiffs’ sincere religious use of psilocybin from the date of this order until this litigation is complete.”
Regarding Jenson’s ongoing criminal case, Singularism’s release said it’s currently working to raise money to cover its ongoing legal defense. Jenson said the goal is to avoid the matter going to a full trial.
“When faced with injustice, when a government uses its power to suppress a peaceful faith and silence those who seek healing, there comes a time when you have no choice but to stand,” he said in a statement. “Singularism does not seek conflict, but we will not retreat from defending our fundamental rights. If we don’t stand firm now, we risk losing the very freedoms that define this nation.”
The new ruling comes after a federal government watchdog last year highlighted a need for clearer timelines and standards in the religious exemption process around controlled substances.
The 80-page report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) should improve the process through which it considers granting religious exemptions for psilocybin and other controlled substances, asserting that the existing route lacks clarity on timing, evaluation and other matters.
GAO focused specifically on psilocybin use under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), finding that DEA’s process was burdensome.
“Selected stakeholders reported several barriers to the legal access and use of psilocybin for religious practices under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” GAO says. “For example, DEA established a process for parties to petition for a religious exemption from the Controlled Substances Act to use controlled substances for religious purposes. However, DEA’s guidance does not inform petitioners on its timeframes to make determinations on completed petitions.”
In 2019, DEA began a rulemaking process around petitions for religious exemptions, the GAO report said, “but there is no timeframe for issuance of the notice or final regulations.”
“Over an 8-year period—from fiscal year 2016 through January 2024—DEA reported that 24 petitioners requested a religious exemption for various controlled substances,” it added. “As of January 2024, DEA reported that none of these petitions had been granted an exemption.”
While exemptions from the Controlled Substances Act for religious use are rare, they’re not entirely unheard of. A legal settlement last year between several government agencies and an Arizona-based nonprofit, for example, permitted the group to import and use ayahuasca as a religious sacrament.
The organization, the Church of the Eagle and the Condor (CEC), said at the time that it was “the first non-Christian church to receive protection for its spiritual practices regarding Ayahusca,” adding that the development under RFRA marks “the first time in history a church’s right to import and share its sacrament has been secured without going to trial.”
CEC sued DEA, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in 2022 over DHS’s seizures of shipments of ayahuasca intended for ceremonial use. The government had also threatened that the group and its members could face federal prosecution.
Months after the settlement, however, the federal government said the agreement was irrelevant in the case of a separate psychedelic church in Iowa that wants to incorporate ayahuasca into its ceremonies.
That church—the Iowaska Church of Healing—first sent its petition to DEA asking for an exemption around ayahuasca use in 2019. A separate request for a tax exemption with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) initially received no response from the agency, according to court filings.
The church found an unusual ally in anti-drug U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who court filings said was instrumental in expediting the regulatory appeals process back in 2021. A Grassley spokesperson later Marijuana Moment, however, that the senator’s help shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as an endorsement of the church’s point of view on psychedelics.
Read the full ruling granting Singularism’s preliminary injunction below:
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