Ruth Institute Blog

by Joe Carter

In 2010, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, who lived with their five children in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, were faced with a choice: abandon their Evangelical Christian religious beliefs or lose custody of their children. The Romeikes had withdrawn their children from German public schools in 2006, after becoming concerned that the educational material employed by the school was undermining the tenets of their Christian faith. After accruing the equivalent of $10,000 worth of fines and the forcible removal of their children from the home, they chose to flee their homeland and seek asylum in the United States. They believed our government was more respectful of religious liberties.

They soon discovered that was not the case.

On January 26, 2010, a federal immigration judge granted the Romeikes political asylum, ruling they had a reasonable fear of persecution for their beliefs if they returned to their homeland. The judge also denounced the German policy, saying it was, “utterly repellent to everything we believe as Americans.” However, President Obama’s Justice Department disagreed. They argued that the family should be denied asylum based on their contention that governments may legitimately use its authority to force parents to send their kids to government-sanctioned schools.

To better understand what Attorney-General Holder and his Justice Department are supporting, let’s look at the German policy. The parent-children relationship is defined in Art. 6 § 2 as follows:

The care and upbringing of children is the natural right of parents and a duty primarily incumbent upon them. The State shall watch over them in the performance of this duty.

And Art. 7 § 1 adds:

The entire school system shall be under the supervision of the state.

What this means for parents, as Franz Reimer explains, is that compulsory schooling is seen as an important duty for parents and children which leaves practically no room for parental choice. The parents’ right to care, says Reimer, is sometimes termed a right “within compulsory schooling, not against compulsory schooling.” The German government believes the law is necessary to “counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies.”

When the law was challenged by religious parents, the European Convention of Human Rights sided with the German government, saying “integration into and first experiences of society are important goals in primary-school education.” In other words, the State’s desire to socialize children to the society’s values trumps the parents rights to raise their children according to their own religious beliefs.

Even if the German state disagrees, being able to raise your children according to one’s religion should be considered a fundamental right in America. But as we have seen with the HHS mandate, the Obama administration believes that if a law can be applied to all people then it cannot possibly make exceptions for religious believers.

That is essentially what Justice Department lawyers are arguing in the legal brief for the case, Romeike v. Holder, which is currently in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. They argue that Germany did not violate the Romeike’s human rights because the ban on homeschooling is a ban for all, not any specific group. Since German law does not prevent, for instance, only evangelical Christians from homeschooling, the Romeike’s are not being persecuted for a religious reason.

Mike Farris, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Asssocaition (HSLDA), the group that is defending the Romeikes, says:

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