Jeffrey Bronfman
Leader, Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (UDV) USA; RFRA Plaintiff
Led the UDV's successful Supreme Court case Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (2006) — the landmark ruling establishing that RFRA protects religious use of controlled psychedelic substances and the legal foundation for every entheogenic church that followed.
Biography
Jeffrey Bronfman is the leader of the United States branch of the Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (UDV), a Brazilian religious organization that uses hoasca (ayahuasca) as its central sacrament. He is a member of the Bronfman family (heirs to the Seagram spirits fortune) who became a UDV member in the late 1980s and helped establish the religion in the United States.
In 2000, the DEA raided the UDV's Santa Fe, New Mexico temple and seized its hoasca sacrament. Bronfman and the UDV fought back, filing suit under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The case — Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal — reached the United States Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in favor of the UDV in 2006. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, held that RFRA required the government to demonstrate a compelling governmental interest before substantially burdening sincere religious practice, and that the government had not met that burden with respect to the UDV's ceremonial hoasca use.
This ruling is the foundational legal precedent for all subsequent RFRA-based psychedelic church cases in the United States. Every entheogenic church that has successfully defended its sacramental use of psilocybin, ayahuasca, or other controlled substances under RFRA — and every attorney like Ian Benouis and Greg Lake who structures churches around RFRA defenses — operates within the legal space that Bronfman's case created.
Bronfman's willingness to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court, backed by personal resources that most religious plaintiffs lack, produced a precedent that extends far beyond ayahuasca. The UDV victory established that the federal government cannot reflexively invoke the Controlled Substances Act to override sincere religious practice.
Organizations
Why They Matter to the LearnShrooms Community
The Gonzales v. UDV Supreme Court ruling is the single most important legal precedent in the history of psychedelic religious freedom in the United States. Every RFRA defense in a psilocybin or entheogenic church case rests on it. Bronfman's decision to fight to the Supreme Court rather than accept a settlement created the legal infrastructure the entire entheogenic church movement depends on.
Legal Context
For the legal landscape where Jeffrey Bronfman operates, see psilocybin laws in New Mexico.