Public School Has Students 'Bowing to the Sun God'

 

A legal case over a public school in California that has students “bowing to the sun god” is looming in an appeals court, where a team of lawyers advocating for student and parental rights is challenging the Encinitas Union School District’s Ashtanga yoga program.

It has broad implications, and it’s getting attention not just in the United States but worldwide.

“At its core, this case is about the American constitutional ideal of religious freedom,” explained Dean Broyles, who runs the the National Center for Law & Policy, which is fighting the school district’s yoga campaign.

The case is now before the California Court of Appeals in San Diego.

Broyles has been joined by Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute.

“This school district has essentially adopted a state religion and is forcing it upon our young children by requiring this class to be taken,” Dacus said. “These actions violate the fundamental right of parents to raise their children according to their beliefs, and they disregard the Constitution that this nation was founded upon.”

“No court in the past 50 years has permitted public school officials during regular classroom instruction to lead students to actively participate in devotional religious activities or practices like Ashtanga yoga’s Surya Namaskara,” Broyles said.

“Public schools may certainly teach about religion because religion is historically and culturally important. But the state is not constitutionally permitted to endorse or promote religion or religious practices,” he said.

“Courts are especially sensitive to the coercive pressures involved when the government, because education is compulsory and supported by tax dollars, leads young impressionable children with tender consciences through group liturgical/ritual religious exercises or activities including bowing to the sun god,” said Broyles.

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