The organization that successfully challenged the federal government's confiscation of its sacramental, hallucinogenic tea is suing the Santa Fe County Commission for blocking its efforts to build a temple in Arroyo Hondo.

O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal -- Portuguese for Central Beneficial Spirit United in the Plants, commonly known as UDV -- on Thursday filed a complaint in U.S. District Court.

In July, the commissioners rejected, 3 to 2, UDV's application to build 11,000-square feet of structures on 2.5 acres at Arroyo Hondo Trail and Brass Horse Road, a little more than a mile south of the Santa Fe city limits.

Some neighbors argued that the proposed temple would increase traffic, tap the area's strained groundwater supplies, encourage drug abuse and disturb the rural nature of the neighborhood.

The new lawsuit asks a judge to order the commission to approve the application and award damages to the UDV, arguing that the denial puts an unjustified burden on the exercise of religion.

Nancy Hollander, the Albuquerque lawyer who filed the lawsuit, led UDV's effort to legalize its use of hoasca -- an hallucinogenic tea made from two Amazonian plants -- after the federal agents confiscated 30 gallons of the tea from UDV's office in Santa Fe on May 21, 1999.

UDV's president, Canadian whiskey heir Jeffrey Bronfman, an Arroyo Hondo resident for well over a decade, challenged the confiscation as an infringement on freedom of religion and other constitutional rights.

The seizure harmed "the core of my being," Bronfman testified in a trial before U.S. District Judge James Parker in 2001. The group sought the right to use hoasca as a religious sacrament -- like the Native American Church does with hallucinogenic peyote.

In 2002, Parker ruled that UDV qualified for a religious exemption to use hoasca and ordered the federal government to cease further seizures, but the U.S. Justice Department and UDV continued to dispute how hoasca should be regulated.

The Justice Department appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which in 2004 upheld Parker, so the Bush Administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2006, the high court, in its first case involving religion under Bush-nominee Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld both the appellate court and Parker.

The recent complaint was brought by UDV, its congregation known as Nucleo Santa Fe and the Aurora Foundation which Bronfman founded in 1997. In it, Hollander argues that for 14 years services have been held in a yurt on Bronfman's property on Brass Horse Road without disturbing neighbors. Now the congregation has grown so large that the yurt is too small and the arguments against building a temple "are fanciful or misinformed," she wrote.

County Attorney Steve Ross said Friday that he has been served with the complaint, but declined comment.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.