STRASBOURG, France — The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Germany has not violated the human rights of parents in forbidding them from educating their children at home for religious reasons. The Alliance Defense Fund funded the legal plight of parents who challenged the German prohibitions.
“Parents should have the final say about the education of their own children,” said ADF Chief Counsel Benjamin Bull. “German Christian home schoolers have been criminally prosecuted and jailed for homeschooling as a violation of German law. The decision by the European Court of Human Rights opens the door to continued prosecution and should highlight to Americans the extreme dangers of allowing international law to be authoritative in our own court systems.”
“ADF funded this case and will continue to look for ways to protect Christian homeschooling,” Bull added. “We will fight any attempt by opponents of American homeschoolers to seize upon this opinion and attempt to import it into U.S. courts.”
The opinion issued by the European Court of Human Rights on Sept. 18 in the case
Konrad v. Germany is available at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/KonradDecision.pdf. ADF-allied attorney Dr. Ronald Reichert represented Christian parents in the case.
ADF attorneys are currently defending parental choice in education in America by defending the constitutionality of Arizona’s tuition tax credit program (
www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3378), attacked by American Civil Liberties Union attorneys in a lawsuit that is currently pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
www.telladf.org