Pubdate: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 Source: Trentonian, The (NJ) Copyright: 2016 The Trentonian Contact: http://www.trentonian.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006 Author: Ed Forchion, njweedman.com For The Trentonian IT'S TIME FOR RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY ON SUPREME COURT I'm not happy Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is dead, but I'm glad we as a nation have the opportunity, if Republicans don't obstruct it, to get a non-Catholic replacement appointed to the bench. In previous columns I mentioned how we (minorities) in New Jersey suffer from having an all-white NJ Supreme Court, and the same is true of the U.S. Supreme Court: Religious freedom suffers wherever we have a lack of religious diversity. The First Amendment prevents government from forbidding free exercise of religion, so government cannot regulate beliefs by foisting them or prohibiting them. Religious worship often entails performing physical acts such as consuming substances (e.g., bread and wine, marijuana, hoasca tea) or abstaining from substances or behaviors. Government could not ban performance of these acts in the context of religious procedure any more than it could ban the beliefs whence these actions originate. So how does the government get away with banning the use of marijuana by Rastafarians, or even Christians, who see marijuana as a sacrament? Antonin Scalia. Scalia is famous for claiming he followed the letter of the law as regards the Constitution. But he infamously suspended the vote count in Florida so his candidate, G. W. Bush, could steal the 2000 election in what I call the Great Supreme Court Coup. Most talk about Scalia's death comes from the perspective of liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. Instead, I want to inject religion into this conversation from my non-Christian POV. One of my pet peeves with the U.S. Supreme Court is that six of its eight judges were Catholics, and many of its rulings exhibit an overt Christian bias. Religious freedom for non-Christians is questionable. The idea of religious freedom has been limited and enforced through the spectacles of Catholics in the court, mainly by Scalia in the past 25 years. Specifically using his rationale in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), determined that a state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on using peyote, even though this substance is part of a Native American religious ritual. States have the power to permit illegal acts performed in pursuit of religious beliefs, but they are not required to do so. Scalia and his fellow Catholics on the bench have an aversion to actually allowing non-Christian religious practices in America. Thus we have no "religious exemption for marihuana" or other non-grape based sacraments. The majority opinion in Oregon v. Smith was delivered by Justice Scalia. To me this was the most important, far-reaching, and everlasting opinion he rendered. Here Scalia changed the game, eviscerating the no harm to the public clause. I believe this case restricted religious freedom for non-Christians. I've tried several times to get a case before the federal courts in hopes of overturning or revising this boner of a decision. The sole purpose of my 2002-03 monthly "Liberty Bell Smoke-Out" protests at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia was specifically to challenge Scalia's majority opinion in "Smith." - https://vimeo.com/5665293 You might notice there is no mention of this Smith decision in the press right now. The Smith decision meant churches no longer had a right to justify their religious practices on the grounds that exercise thereof caused no harm to the public. This was huge in 1990. Imagine this fascist New York Catholic and his court cronies outlawing the practice of a Native American "church" that has congregated on this continent for over 4,000 years - and changing 200 years of precedent in U.S. law and history. Well, that's what happened in Smith. If not for this ruling, Rastafarians who use marijuana could also claim their practice doesn't harm others. (Google: hoasca and the UDV church.) That boner caused an alliance in Congress at the time between Democrats and conservative Christian Republicans. Both Republicans and Democrats had a major problem with the Smith decision, so a bill was introduced by Congressman Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on March 11, 1993. Surprisingly, Congress passed it in record time as the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), and Democratic President Bill Clinton signed it into law. The RFRA was a direct response to Scalia's blind Catholic ruling, and it overturned Smith - not the decision itself, but the effect of the decision. It was probably the last bipartisan support Clinton received. Had the story ended there I'd be happy, but in revenge the Catholics on the bench struck down the RFRA in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), as unconstitutional (as it applied to the states). At that time most people didn't understand I had a method to my madness. I deliberately attempted to create a case similar to Smith (religious sacrament) by praying at the federal enclave of the Liberty Bell and consuming the sacrament of marijuana in monthly protests. Since the Liberty Bell was federal property I believed the case would eventually be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. I wanted a federal ruling in the Third District that marijuana is a sacrament to join a similar ruling in the Ninth District Court of Appeals: In 1996 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that under the RFRA of 1993 Rastafarian defendants should be allowed to show that they use marijuana for bona fide religious reasons in their defense against charges of possession of marijuana (U.S. v. BAUER, Ninth Circuit, 1996). No, Scalia was not alone on Smith, and too many remaining judges want to use their position to advance their own Catholic or fascist opinions at the cost of our constitutionally defined freedoms. My Liberty Bell case, USA v. Forchion, (3d Cir. Pa., Feb. 7, 2007), went before Catholic Federal Magistrate Judge Rappaport; at trial he refused to allow me to use the RFRA by falsely claiming it didn't apply to marijuana, in direct opposition to the Ninth Circuit ruling. I appealed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which vacated my sentence and told Rappaport the RFRA was relevant and to re-try me. Instead he dismissed the case rather than have it go through him to reach the Supreme Court; he falsely claimed I hadn't filed my appeal in a timely manner, which was a blatant lie. That was another case of the Politics of Pot, Supreme Court style. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom