At the Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants in Oakland, Calif., the minister wears a robe covered in cannabis leaves. During sermons, members are free to smoke marijuana – received as a “sacrament” – in an effort to connect with a higher power.

In August 2020, the church’s operations were interrupted when Oakland police officers raided the building and seized around $200,000 in cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms and cash, claiming the establishment operated more like an illegal dispensary than a religious institution. No one was arrested or charged, though the items seized were never returned, according to news reports.

Now, the Zide Door Church is suing the city of Oakland and its police department, alleging that the raid violated its constitutional and religious freedoms.

In California, recreational marijuana is legal, and businesses with permits can sell it. In Oakland, elected officials voted unanimously in 2019 to effectively decriminalize certain natural hallucinogenic products, like mushrooms, though they cannot be sold.

Neither the Oakland Police Department nor the Oakland city attorney’s office immediately responded to a request for comment from The Washington Post late Tuesday. Barbara Parker, the city attorney, told the San Francisco Chronicle that her office hadn’t yet been served with the lawsuit and did not comment further.

The Zide Door Church opened its doors in early 2019 as the physical worship center for members of the Church of Ambrosia, “a nondenominational, interfaith religious organization that supports the use and safe access” of certain natural psychedelics, according to its website. In the lawsuit, it outlined what it calls the “sacramental use” of cannabis, mushrooms and other hallucinogenic substances as a way to connect with “a higher consciousness, their own eternal souls, spiritual beings and God,” though psychedelic mushroom consumption is not allowed on-site.

Dave Hodges, the church’s founder, told the Chronicle that the church has some 60,000 members.

To become a member, applicants must complete an online questionnaire that asks if they work in law enforcement and if they accept marijuana and mushrooms as “part of your religion.”

Zide Door is located in East Oakland and has armed security personnel guarding the entrance, the Oaklandside reported. Hodges told the outlet the guards are there because the church is in a “very high-crime area.”

The church does not sell drugs, Hodges told the Chronicle. Instead, it charges a monthly $5 membership fee and then asks for donations in exchange for psychedelic products. As many as 200 people visit the church each day to get marijuana and mushrooms, Hodges told the Chronicle.

For about a year, the church held on-site services every Sunday at 4:20 p.m., during which Hodges donned his clerical robe adorned with marijuana leaves and passed out joints, according to the Chronicle. But since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, it has rarely held services.

Following the raid, some were skeptical that Hodges was running a real church and instead suspected it was a front to sell drugs, Vice reported. But Hodges has repeatedly insisted he’s running a religious establishment.

“This is not just an excuse to sell drugs,” he told the Chronicle. “This is what we truly believe is the origin of all religion and really what religion should be.”

In May 2019, according to a search warrant affidavit, the city received a complaint that the church was operating as a cannabis dispensary without a permit. In August 2020, an undercover police officer showed up at the church, became a member and exchanged money for pot, according to court records.

Days later, police raided the church.

Surveillance video of the raid, posted to Hodges’s Instagram account, shows police officers stream into the building, some with their guns drawn. Footage also shows firefighters taking heavy machinery to locked safes. Law enforcement officials seized a computer, some documents, cannabis products, mushrooms and cash, according to the lawsuit.

In the end, Hodges was given a fine and a warning, though the seized items were not returned, the Chronicle and Oaklandside reported.

The lawsuit alleges that the raid violated the church’s “sincere exercise of religion” in violation of federal law, as well as the church’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law, told The Post in an email that the church may have a hard time defending itself as exempt from state drug laws.

“The general rule is that there is no exception to laws for religious beliefs,” he wrote. “Assuming that the California law applies to everyone and does not have discretion to grant exceptions, then there is not a basis for challenging it based on religion.”

But Jesse Choper, another law expert at UC Berkeley, told the Chronicle that the religion argument might just work.

“If it’s not a sham business,” he said, “I would say the smokers got a pretty good case.”