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Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Federal Judge in Utah Orders Local Officials To Return a Religious Group's Psychedelic Sacrament
When Bridger Lee Jensen opened a spiritual center in Provo, Utah, he contacted city officials to let them know what would be happening there: The religious group he had founded, Singularism, would be conducting ceremonies involving a tea made from psilocybin mushrooms. "Singularism is optimistic that through partnership and dialogue, it can foster an environment that respects diversity and upholds individual rights," Jensen wrote in a September 2023 letter to the Provo City Council and Mayor Michelle Kaufusi. Jensen, who wanted to "establish an open line of communication" with local officials, said he would be happy to answer their questions and invited them to visit the center. Jensen's optimism proved to be unfounded. The city did not respond to his overture until more than a year later, when Provo police searched the Singularism center and seized its sacrament: about 450 grams of "mushrooms and mushroom-like material" that the group kept inside a locked safe. The seizure was the result of an investigation in which an undercover officer posed as a would-be Singularism facilitator. That raid happened on November 11, 2024, less than eight months after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox had signed the state's version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). That law likely protects Singularism's psychedelic rituals, a federal judge ruled last month. U.S. District Judge Jill Parrish granted Jensen's request for a preliminary injunction against city and county officials, ordering them to return the mushrooms and to refrain from further interference with the group's "sincere religious use of psilocybin" while the case is pending. "In this litigation, the religious-exercise claims of a minority entheogenic religion put the State of Utah's commitment to religious freedom to the test," Parrish writes in Jensen v. Utah County. If such a commitment "is to mean anything," she says, it must protect "unpopular or unfamiliar religious groups" as well as "popular or familiar ones." Parrish notes that "the very founding of the State of Utah reflects the lived experience of that truth by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." In light of that history, she suggests, "it is ironic" that "not long after enacting its RFRA to provide special protections for religious exercise, the State of Utah should so vigorously deploy its resources, particularly the coercive power of its criminal-justice system, to harass and shut down a new religion it finds offensive practically without any evidence that [the] religion's practices have imposed any harms on its own practitioners or anyone else." That vigorous deployment of law enforcement resources included drug charges that Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray filed against Jensen in December, five days after Parrish issued a temporary restraining order based on her initial assessment of the case. The defendants also sought to strengthen their criminal case with discovery requests that Parrish deemed "offensively overbroad." They wanted to know, for example, "each instance where Jensen consumed drugs prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act between 2015 and the present." They also sought "documents sufficient to identify each individual to whom Plaintiffs have administered psilocybin from 2019 to present." Those requests, Parrish notes, "concerned criminal conduct far in the past and effectively demanded Singularism to disclose the identities of all individuals who had affiliated with the religion." She thought "the sheer breadth of the requests" suggested that the defendants were trying to use discovery in the civil case to "investigate Plaintiffs for the pending state criminal case—a patently improper purpose." Parrish notes that her injunction "does not prevent the government from continuing to prosecute Mr. Jensen in the pending state criminal case." Nor does it address Jensen's argument that his group's activities are protected by the federal and state constitutions. Parrish is delaying consideration of those issues until April 11, giving Utah Attorney General Derek Brown a chance to "present evidence or argument on the constitutional questions should he wish to do so." But because Parrish concluded that Jensen is likely to prevail on his RFRA claim, her order does bar the defendants from continuing to "harass" his group. The federal RFRA, which Congress enacted in 1993, codified the religious freedom test that the U.S. Supreme Court applied prior to its 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith, which involved the use of peyote by members of the Native American Church. Under that test, the government may not "substantially burden a person's exercise of religion," even by applying "a rule of general applicability," unless it shows that the burden is "the least restrictive means" of furthering a "compelling governmental interest." In the 2006 case Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that RFRA protected the American branch of a syncretic Brazil-based church from federal interference with its rituals, even though the group's sacramental tea, ayahuasca, contained the otherwise illegal psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine. That precedent invited other groups to make similar claims—often unsuccessfully, depending on what courts made of their professed beliefs. In the 1997 case City of Boerne v. Florida, the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA was unconstitutional as applied to state and local governments. Laws like Utah's, which 29 states have enacted, aim to fill that gap. The defendants in Jensen v. Utah County argued that Utah's RFRA did not apply to Singularism, which they portrayed as a drug trafficking operation disguised as a religion. Parrish rejected that characterization. "Based on all the evidence in the record," she wrote, "the court has no difficulty concluding that Plaintiffs are sincere in their beliefs and that those beliefs are religious in nature." Parrish notes that the Utah Division of Professional Licensing rejected a complaint that Jensen was "practicing mental-health therapy without a license." The agency agreed with him that, as "a facilitator at Singularism," he was exempt from the licensing requirement because he was a "recognized member of the clergy." The city of Provo likewise told Jensen his spiritual center did not need a business license to "conduct its religious activities." Parrish also considered testimony from Jensen and other members of the group, all of whom "connected their practice of Singularism to their faith journeys," describing how "the tea ceremonies had helped them rediscover their religious faith." And she concluded that Singularism features several "accoutrements of religion"—one of the factors that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit (which includes Utah) has said judges should consider in religious freedom cases. "Most simply, [Singularism] has prophets and a scripture," Parrish writes. "As Mr. Jensen explained, during a tea ceremony, the voyager is a prophet receiving spiritual insight, and the facilitator serves as a scribe to record those insights; thus, the recordings from every voyage individually and collectively become Singularism's sacred scripture. On top of that, the tea ceremony is a carefully organized and guarded ritual. The voyager must first pass a screening to ensure his sincerity, and during the prep session, he sets an intention for the voyage. Other preparations for the tea ceremony could include something more familiar from larger religions, such as fasting and reading and internalizing one's patriarchal blessing." The defendants objected that "Singularism 'does not claim special access to divine truths,' instead encouraging its practitioners to more deeply 'discover and define their own beliefs,' and explicitly states that 'no organization, including [it], has all the answers to life's most difficult questions.'" But Parrish concluded that "it would be inappropriate to hold Singularism's existential humility against it," since that attitude "is important for enabling and supporting the smooth functioning of a pluralistic society like ours." The defendants thought "Singularism's citations to scientific and medical research on the therapeutic potential of psilocybin" undermined its claim to be a religion. "An overlap between scientific and religious reasons for a practice" does not make that practice "any less religious," Parrish writes. "Indeed, many religious practices in more common religions, such as gathering in community for music, prayer, and fellowship, can be justified by a litany of nonreligious reasons and scientific research." The defendants noted that Singularism charges people "about $1,600 per tea ceremony," which far exceeds the marginal cost of the psilocybin. Although that "admittedly looks suspicious at first," Parrish says, Jensen's current annual income of $40,000 or so is about a third of what he earned in his former occupation as a "licensed mental-health practitioner." If Jensen "were actually motivated by the promise of large profits," she says, "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." Parrish also notes that "for-profit businesses can claim religious-liberty protections," as the Supreme Court held in the 2014 case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. She adds that "prominent religions like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which no one would doubt qualifies for religious-liberty protections under the law, require payment of tithes for good-standing membership." In Parrish's view, "Plaintiffs have established that the government has substantially burdened their 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." To justify that burden, the defendants cited various public safety concerns, including potential diversion of psilocybin and the possibility that mushrooms "may be tainted and therefore cause harm to even sincere users." But "the government has not shown evidence of actual contamination or actual diversion," Parrish says. Parrish notes that the mushrooms used by Jensen's group are legally produced in Oregon, which allows psilocybin consumption at state-licensed businesses. The mushrooms are tested for contaminants by an Oregon lab "before being freeze dried for transportation to Singularism's spiritual center." Parrish adds that "only facilitators have access to the mushrooms (which are never used other than in the sacramental tea ceremonies), and every voyager must undergo a careful screening process with two or more facilitators, at least one of whom has a background in medicine or clinical therapy." In 15 months of ceremonies, she says, only one person with "an undisclosed mental-health issue" had a bad trip, which the center handled appropriately by "ensuring that she received the treatment she needed at the hospital." Is shutting Singularism down the "least restrictive means" of addressing the government's concerns? Parrish thought not. "The most obvious alternative at hand is for the government to simply do nothing," Parrish writes. "After all, the government waited over a year after Singularismopened its spiritual center—at which time Mr. Jensen had fully disclosed Singularism'spractices—to perform its criminal investigation. Defendants have pointed to zero evidence that this do-nothing period threatened its interests in public safety." Even "assuming that some form of regulation is necessary for the government to protect the public," Parrish says, two exceptions in the Utah Controlled Substances Act point the way to less restrictive options. The law recognizes "a religious exemption for peyote," she notes, and the defendants "do not attempt to explain why the government could not create a similar exemption for sincere religious use of psilocybin." Amendments approved in 2024 established another exemption, for "psylocibin administered as part of behavioral health treatment programs developed by certain healthcare systems." Those provisions, Parrish notes, impose "relatively few restrictions on how covered healthcare systems may use psilocybin." She says the defendants "do not attempt to explain why the government could not implement an analogous system of oversight for Singularism's sincere religious practices." A more skeptical judge might have reached a different conclusion in this case. Jason Adelstone, an attorney at Harris Sliwoski, notes that Parrish's decision "expands the traditional understanding of sincere religious belief." She acknowledges, for example, that "Singularism does not follow a rigid set of prescribed beliefs but instead encourages adherents to explore their own spiritual experiences, making each participant their own prophet." Parrish also "rejected arguments that the reliance on scientific and medical principles in psilocybin ceremonies meant the group was operating more like a clinic than a religion." If upheld on appeal, Adelstone suggests, the decision "could pave the way for the recognition of new religious movements that incorporate psychedelics as a sacrament, offering a framework for how such beliefs may be evaluated moving forward." Singularism—which advertises "safe, evidence-based psilocybin therapy through clinically informed and spiritually guided ceremonies" aimed at "healing, personal growth, or profound spiritual insight"—straddles the line between religion and psychotherapy. Then again, that line can be pretty hazy, and trying to police it invites unseemly judicial inquiries into the sincerity and authenticity of people's beliefs. "If you wanted to highlight the absurdity of the drug war," Reason's C.J. Ciaramella notes, "it would be hard to find a better example than charging federal narcs with parsing the religious beliefs of groups like the Vine of Light Church." That Arizona group attracted unwanted attention from the Drug Enforcement Administration because it sponsored "monthly meetings at which paying guests drank ayahuasca." I agree with Ciaramella that "it should not matter whether would-be ayahuasca drinkers sincerely believe in shamanism or simply believe they will derive mental health benefits from the experience." Nor should it matter whether people seek that experience simply out of curiosity or an interest in self-exploration untethered from "mental health benefits" that a psychiatrist might recognize. But in Utah and nearly every other state, such distinctions still matter. And in that context, decisions like this one count as a partial victory for pharmacological freedom. The post A Federal Judge in Utah Orders Local Officials To Return a Religious Group's Psychedelic Sacrament appeared first on
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Provo considering water rate hikes to address aging infrastructure
The Provo City Council is looking into solutions for improving water infrastructure including a potential ordinance that would significantly increase the water rate. The council has been looking at water rates since mid-2023 "guided by the need to balance affordability for residents, conservation and financial sustainability," a city staff report said. The proposed ordinance would amend water fees by adjusting water rates and changing billing to a tiered structure for usage by type and meter size rather than the current seasonal rates. After discussion and hearing comments from more than a dozen residents in Tuesday's council meeting, the council voted unanimously to continue the discussion. Councilman Gary Garrett suggested better education programming so residents can fully understand why the city is looking into this issue and to gather more information from residents about their ideas on how to proceed. "One thing has been clear ... is that we haven't been very thorough at establishing the need with our residents about maintaining this delivery system of water. There are things we can do to better communicate with our residents about what needs to be done," Garrett said. The reason for an increase stems from Provo's aging water infrastructure. Approximately 16% of the pipes in Provo were installed before 1955, and another 38% were installed between 1956 and 1990, according to data presented by consultant Keith Larson. Larson said that based on the expected service life of Provo's water system, the city should be investing at least $14 million a year into it. Currently, Provo only invests around $9 million. The water hikes would produce revenue for operation and maintenance costs, which have increased from inflation, and to address replacement and repairs of the aging water system. Additionally, the city's Water Master Plan recommends around $80 million worth of capital projects to maintain the level of service in water infrastructure and address planned growth, according to Larson. The proposal included a 12% rate increase for 2025, which would equate to about $6 more a month for the average water user. Each year the rate would continue to increase at least 6% through 2033 to help catch the city up to the recommended level of funding. Larson said spreading the increase out over the next nine years would maintain service at an affordable price while proactively replacing an aging system, which he said is cheaper in the long term compared to reactively replacing pipes after they break. Along with the water rate increase, the proposal would change billing to a tiered structure, meaning "more expensive water will be charged at a higher rate and less expensive water will be charged at its actual rate, and it creates a fairer cost structure," water resource director Gary Calder said. The tiered structure would include a base rate of around $23, then for the first tier charge $1.46 per thousand gallons for up to 10,000 gallons used. Larson said this would cover the average household's essential indoor uses. In the second tier, it would cost $2.27 per thousand gallons for 10,000 to 55,000 gallons used. This covers the typical outdoor water use, Larson said. The third tier for higher levels of water use would cost $3.97 per thousand gallons above 55,000 gallons used. The tiers vary in volume brackets depending on meter size, but would cost the same per thousand gallons, Larson said. Provo resident Valerie Paxman acknowledged the need for improvements on the water system, but "it is too much" with inflation, rising bills and increased taxes. James Robertson owns an acre of land with dozens of fruit trees and a garden on it. He and another resident asked if the city could make exceptions for people who need extra water for beneficial land uses such as agriculture. "It's been hard enough to pay what I've been paying, and I don't know how to handle the substantial increase," Robertson said. Other residents suggested implementing conservation programs to reward residents who use less water, not penalizing people who let their yards die when they can't afford water, or evaluating the water rate increases yearly rather than implementing an almost decade-long increase. Councilwoman Rachel Whipple said it's disappointing when the council works on something for more than a year and a proposal gets this far in the process, then they are flooded with calls about something being "out of the blue." She encouraged everyone to be involved in city issues and participate in meetings because "we do want you to be involved. We do want to hear because your information helps us make better decisions." The council did not specify when the issue would be brought up for discussion again.
