A San Diego-area couple sued their children's school district this week, claiming that the district's yoga program violates California state religious freedom laws.

Attorneys for the Escondido, Calif.-based National Center for Law & Policy on Wednesday filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of Stephen and Jennifer Sedlock in a San Diego County Superior Court. The lawsuit accuses the Encinitas Union School District and its administrators of violating provisions of the California State Constitution that prohibit schools and other public entities from using state resources to promote religious teachings or practices.

The school district began offering Ashtanga yoga classes as part of its physical education program at the start of the 2012-2013 school year. The program is funded entirely by a $533,000 grant from the San Diego-based K.P. Jois Foundation in exchange for the district's participation in the Jois Foundation's multiyear research project studying the health, wellness and educational benefits of yoga in elementary and secondary schools.

Mr. and Mrs. Sedlock, who are Christian, claim in their lawsuit that Ashtanga is a “very religious form of yoga that promotes and advances religion, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Western metaphysics.” While students can opt out of the classes, the lawsuit claims that the school district has to date failed to provide those students with alternative physical education activities that would allow them to meet their minimum physical education requirements for the semester.

The lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction barring the school district from continuing to offer the yoga classes as a part of its curriculum.

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“The issue is whether a religious organization is permitted to buy its way into a school district to have unfettered access to young impressionable children to beta test its inherently and pervasively religious program,” Dean Broyles, president and chief counsel of the National Center for Law & Policy, said in an email to Business Insurance. “The main reason we do not allow the state to establish religion is that it is always very divisive when the state tries to promote or enforce a particular religious orthodoxy — because it tramples on the individual's conscience rights.”

District superintendent Timothy Baird is named as co-defendant in the lawsuit, as are the five members of the Encinitas Union school board.

In November, administrators published an FAQ letter about the program after several district parents voiced concerns about yoga's religious aspects, including its historical links to Hinduism and Buddhism.

“The yoga program taught in the Encinitas Union School District provides no religious instruction whatsoever,” the letter said. “There is no discussion of spiritualism, mysticism or religion in any context. The students simply perform the physical components of movement and breathing related to mainstream yoga.”