German Asylum Case Headed to Supreme Court?

A recent press release from the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) gives us the details of this unique case that might be headed to the United States Supreme Court:

In April 2013, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sustained the Obama administration’s revocation of asylum granted to the family in 2010.

The original immigration judge, Lawrence O. Burman, granted the Romeike family asylum on January 26, 2010, under the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) because Germany’s national policy of suppressing homeschooling violated their religious faith and because German authorities were improperly motivated to suppress homeschoolers as a social group.

In its ruling against the Romeikes, the Sixth Circuit rejected the judge’s findings, stating that Germany’s harsh treatment of homeschoolers did not amount to persecution, and that the German authorities were not motivated by an improper purpose.

After losing the Court of Appeals, the normal route is to request a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. As students will recall, a hearing before the highest court is not a matter of right. Instead, the Court grants permission to only those cases it wishes to hear. It takes four of the nine Justices to agree to hear the case in order for it to reach the Court, and of the thousands of requests that the Court receives each year, usually only around 75 are heard.