Jesse Choper and Stephen Sugarman quoted in The Christian Science Monitor, July 3, 2013
“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 School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. “McGowan v. Maryland saved a lot of other religious-looking laws.”
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…. 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.”