To the mat: Parents to appeal ruling allowing yoga in public schools

On its website, the foundation describes its school curriculum as using "the techniques of yoga, meditation and proper nutrition to create a positive lifestyle change," adding: "It takes more than math and science to raise a human being."

Responding to Monday's decision, the Encinitas Union School District, which has full-time yoga teachers at each of its nine campuses, said in a statement: “We are pleased that the court ruled in our favor and look forward to continuing  to offer a comprehensive health and wellness program with yoga as one of its components.”

But Mr. Broyles says there is a double standard operating when priests and rabbis can be handed speaker guidelines on how to pray in a sectarian matter for public school graduations – as dictated by the US Supreme Court decision Lee v. Weisman (1992) – and yet let an overtly Hindu practice be taught in schools. He says he won’t divulge on what grounds his appeal will be based, but that “several are valid.”

“If this is opinion is not overturned, it will allow the precedent of allowing far-flung, obscure religions to prevail, while keeping out the ones we know well, simply because the judge thinks these 5- to 12-year-olds don’t recognize the religious teachings. The First Amendment says to me that all should be treated fairly and equally and that religious freedom is not for sale.”

Several constitutional scholars say any appeal faces an uphill battle because the basis of the ruling is a frequently tested US Supreme Court decision, McGowan v. Maryland (1961), that is clear: Laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have a secular purpose. 

“Just because the Ten Commandments condemn murder and theft doesn’t make laws prohibiting murder a violation of church and state," says Jesse Choper, a constitutional scholar at the Boalt School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. "McGowan v. Maryland saved a lot of other religious-looking laws.”

In that case, he says, the court rejected a challenge to laws requiring that most large-scale commercial enterprises remain closed on Sundays. The court found that Sunday closing laws were originally efforts to promote church attendance. "But, despite the strongly religious origin of these laws, nonreligious arguments for Sunday closing began to be heard more distinctly," said the court.

Moreover, the San Diego case is not the first time a court has rejected a legal claim that teaching yoga in the public schools violates the First Amendment prohibition of the establishment of religion by government, says UC Berkeley law professor Stephen Sugarman. In Altmans v. Bedford Central School District (1996), plaintiffs challenged the teaching of meditation, yoga, and guided-imagery in the public school classrooms, alleging that such classes exposed their impressionable children to "New Age spirituality." That case found that plaintiffs failed to show that the activities were used in ways that were religious.

What is termed yoga can be delivered as a form of healthful exercise and breathing, in effect, as part of the physical education program, he says. "That is what the judge decided here." 

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