for the family to be awarded Asylum.
A US appeals court has denied asylum to a Christian family who fled Germany so they could home-school their children, ruling that immigration laws do not grant a safe haven to people everywhere who face restrictions that would be prohibited under the Constitution.
Many US home-school families and evangelical Christians have taken up the cause of Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, who faced fines and the threat of losing custody of their children because they refused to comply with Germany's compulsory school attendance law.
In 2008, the Romeikes moved from Germany to the US and applied for asylum. That request was initially granted by an immigration judge in 2010. But the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned that ruling, and the Romeikes appealed.
On Tuesday, a three-member panel of US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Romeikes do not meet the criteria for asylum.
"The question is not whether Germany's policy violates the American Constitution, whether it violates the parameters of an international treaty or whether Germany's law is a good idea. It is whether the Romeikes have established the prerequisites of an asylum claim - a well-founded fear of persecution on account of a protected ground," the court wrote. In this case, that protected ground is religious freedom.
The court found that the German government treats all truants the same, regardless of their reasons for not attending school.
The Home School Legal Defence Association represented the Romeikes in court. Mike Donnelly, its director of international relations, said the Romeikes planned to appeal.
"The court ignored the evidence that Germany targets people for religious or philosophical reasons," Donnelly said, referring to a 2003 German Supreme Court decision that found the compulsory attendance law served a legitimate government interest of counteracting the development of parallel societies.
The 6th Circuit considered this argument but dismissed it, stating, "Any compulsory-attendance law could be said to have this effect."
The US government said in court documents the Romeikes did not belong to any particular Christian denomination and described the parents' objections to the government-approved schools as vague.
For instance, Uwe Romeike claimed that the schools taught witchcraft based on a game played by classmates of his wife when she was in school "that involved pushing chairs and glasses around, and dangling a pendulum."
