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Oregon v Smith, the Supreme Court held that members of the Native American Church were not constitutionally entitled to ingest peyote as part of their religion's sacrament in the face of an Oregon law outlawing the use of peyote.' Many aspects of the Smith decision have been sharply criticized, but none so much as the general view of religious exemptions announced by Justice Scalia's opinion for the Court. Justice Scalia distinguished freedom of religious belief from behavior driven by religious belief, and further distinguished laws directed at religion from general laws that merely collide with behavior driven by religious belief. That work done, Justice Scalia had a simple and flat response to the constitutional claimants in Smith: religious believers have no constitutional license to disregard otherwise-valid general laws that conflict with the dictates of their religion. 2 Smith sharply divided the Court on the question of extant doctrine as to the constitutional status of religious exemptions.

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