The U.S. Justice Department says home-schooling is not a fundamental right.

That was the argument the Obama administration made in federal court against an evangelical Christian family from Germany seeking asylum in the United States.

Germany broadly forbids home-schooling. So the Romeike family was forced to flee the country or risk losing their five children to the German government, which was trying to force them to put their children in public schools.

The Homeschool Legal Defense Association is working on the Romeike family's behalf.

Michael Farris, founder and chairman of HSLDA, wrote about Germany's home-school ban in his blog saying, "It is thought control. It is belief control. It is totalitarianism dressed up in politically correct lingo."

The Romeikes claim their religious freedoms are being violated.

But U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has filed against the Romeike family in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He said that asylum should not be granted to home-schoolers since home-schooling is not protected under religious freedom.

But Farris wrote, "In most asylum cases, there is some guesswork necessary to figure out the government's true motive -- but not in this case."

"The Supreme Court of Germany declared that the purpose of the German ban on home-schooling was to 'counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies,'" Farris explained.