Editing Neo-American Church (section)

==''United States vs. Kuch''==
The [[Native American Church]] (no relation) was around this time fighting successfully in several state courts to uphold its legal permission to use [[peyote]] (normally a banned substance) in religious ceremonies;<ref name=PeyoteReligion/> the Neo-American Church hoped to gain the same right, by analogy.<ref name=Green/> One of the Church's ministers, Judith H. Kuch, was arrested and put on federal trial on narcotics charges in 1968. Kuch claimed that her use of LSD was a religious requirement.

The judge ruled that the Church's rituals did not merit protection under the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] as he could find no evidence of "a religious discipline, a ritual, or tenets to guide one's daily existence"<ref name=Slate/> and that "...the [Neo-American Church] membership is mocking established institutions [and] playing with words... There is a conscious effort to assert in passing the attributes of religion but obviously only for tactical purposes"<ref name=USAvsKuch/> and that "[i]t is clear that the desire to use drugs and to enjoy drugs for their own sake, regardless of religious experience, is the coagulant of this organization and the reason for its existence."<ref name=Dorf/> This was an instance, rare in [[American Constitutional jurisprudence]], of a judge finding as an issue of fact that someone does not actually hold the religious views she professes.<ref name=Dorf/> (Regardless of the merits of the religion, the judge in any case found substantial state interest in denying the exemption.<ref name=LeoneZaretsky/>)