We have been covering the case of the Romeikes, devout Christians from Germany who wanted to homeschool their children because of what they perceived as the secularist agenda in German public schools. They fled and sought asylum in the U.S. after they faced mounting fines and the potential of imprisonment:
After losing in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Romeikes on October 10, 2013, filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari seeking to have the U.S. Supreme Court take the case.
On October 29 the government waived its right to respond, but on November 19 the Supreme Court asked the government to respond to the Petition. That response was filed two days ago (see embed at bottom of post). It’s hard to know when the Court will rule on whether to take the case.
For an indication of what is at stake for the Romeikes if they are forced back to Germany, consider the case of the Wunderlich family:
DARMSTADT, Germany, January 16, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a shocking verdict regarding a homeschool case in Germany, a family court judge has refused to return legal custody of four children to Christian parents to prevent the family from obtaining visas that would allow them to travel to a country where homeschooling is permitted.In his December ruling against the Wunderlich family, judge Marcus Malkmus called homeschooling a “concrete endangerment to the well-being of the child,” comparing it to a “straitjacket” that he said binds children to “years of isolation.”
“The request of the parents to reinstate their right to determine the location of the children, the right to make educational decisions for the children, as well as the right to file legal applications for their children is being refused,” the judge stated.
The Wunderlich family made international headlines in August when a team of 20 social workers, police officers, and special agents stormed the homeschooling family’s residence and forcibly removed the children, ages 7–14.
Parents Dirk and Petra were accused of defying a German ban on home education. The children were returned to the parents in September on condition that the parents send their children to public school. Since the court had awarded legal custody of the children to social workers in 2012, the parents had no choice but to comply.
In his decision, the judge ruled that it was necessary to keep the Wunderlich children in public school for their own “well-being,” arguing that if the children were homeschool in Germany or abroad they would “grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”
Romeike – Brief for DOJ in Opposition to Certiorari _21 Jan 2014
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