Defendant misconceives the Constitution and the decisions when she claims in effect an unbridled right to practice her beliefs. The public interest is paramount and if properly determined the Congress may inhibit or prevent acts as opposed to beliefs even where those acts are in accord with religious convictions or beliefs. If individual religious conviction permits one to act contrary to civic duty, public health and the criminal laws of the land, then the right to be let alone in one’s belief with all the spiritual peace it guarantees would be destroyed in the resulting breakdown of society...

Unfortunately we have been gradually drifting away from this pristine view taken by our founding fathers that religious beliefs were to be upheld at all cost but that acts induced by religious beliefs could be prohibited where Congress spoke in the interests of society as a whole. Recent decisions of the Supreme Court suggest that there must be a balancing of the legislative end to be achieved against the effect of the legislation on practices and hence the acts of the members of a particular religion... The Court concludes that under any common sense view of undisputed facts the full enforcement of the statute here involved is necessary in the public interest and the unintended but obvious restrictions on the practices of defendant's church are wholly permissible.
-- District Judge Gemmell’s judgment in U.S. v. Kuch (1968).