A federal judge has ruled that a Utah-based faith group that uses psilocybin mushrooms as sacrament can move forward with its religious-rights lawsuit against local officials. On August 4, Judge Jill Parrish of the United States District Court for the District of Utah rejected a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, and ordered authorities to suspend criminal prosecution against Singularism Spiritual Center and its founder, Bridger Jensen, while the case is ongoing.
Jensen opened the small spiritual center in Provo in 2023. Singularism guides supervised “voyages” using psilocybin tea, with none of the psilocybin being consumed or stored outside the facility.
“I wouldn’t [call Singularism] a congregation,” Jensen told Filter. “I’m very influenced by my psychotherapy background. It’s more individual ceremonies.”
In each ceremony, he explained, the “voyager” is guided by a supervisor as well as a practitioner who serves the tea. He described the practitioners as “essentially trained clergymen.” When Singularism first opened its doors, Jensen reached out to the county prosecutor, the police chief and the mayor, explaining the nature of his work and inviting them for a tour.
“I believed we were in the bounds of the law and the constitution,” he said, “and I wanted to open [a] dialogue with them to see how we could operate under RFRA protection.”
No one took him up on his offer. But a year and a half later, Jensen was getting out of his car one day and suddenly found himself surrounded by a SWAT team.
“They raided our treatment center, took our mushrooms, detained me,” he said. “Then sent threatening letters to our landlord saying we were a public nuisance and danger to the community.”
“[T]he prosecution was brought in bad faith as part of a larger effort to harass Plaintiffs for their entheogenic religious practices,” wrote Judge Parrish.
Jensen sued. Utah had passed its Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 2024, stating that a “government entity may not substantially burden the free exercise of religion.” Jensen alleged that law enforcement had violated Singularism’s right to religious expression, which is protected under the First Amendment, and had also violated the state RFRA.
He told Filter that this is the first case to cite the RFRA as a legal defense. The county had requested that the suit be thrown out, but that request has now been dismissed by Judge Parrish, following the preliminary injunction she had granted Singularism in March.
“[T]he prosecution was brought in bad faith as part of a larger effort to harass Plaintiffs for their entheogenic religious practices and in hopes of giving the government a second opportunity to litigate the free-exercise issues presented squarely in this case,” Parrish wrote in her August 4 ruling. “The prosecution has already caused Singularism to lose many of its practitioners and affiliates, and forcing Plaintiffs to wait until the conclusion of the criminal proceedings to secure their free-exercise rights would be the equivalent of issuing a death warrant for their nascent religion.”
The Utah RFRA is modeled after the federal version signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993. That law was a response to another legal case involving psychedelics, Employment Division v. Smith, which was filed after a rehab facility fired two members of the Native American Church for using peyote—a psychedelic component of their religious ceremonies—and the state of Oregon subsequently denied them unemployment. The Supreme Court ruled against them.
Public outcry over the Supreme Court’s decision led to the federal RFRA. But in 1997, the Supreme Court dealt that law a substantial blow with its decision in City of Boerne v. Flores, when it concluded that the law could not be applied at the state level. As a result, dozens of states have since passed their own RFRA equivalents.
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