A group of Virginia yogis won’t take the state’s plans to regulate them lying down.
Three instructors filed suit against the state Tuesday, saying Virginia’s efforts to license yoga teacher trainers violate their First Amendment right to free speech.
The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia says yoga trainers are subject to vocational school licensing laws that would require them to pay a $2,500 application fee for certification and annual renewal fees. Trainers also would be faced with audits and financial and other reporting requirements.
Penalties for failing to comply would start at $1,000.
For studio owners such as Suzanne Leitner-Wise, a plaintiff in the case and the co-owner of Little River Yoga in Alexandria, the fees would put her out of the business of teacher training.
But more importantly for Leitner-Wise, she says, the plan is unconstitutional. “My students and I have a right to be talking about philosophy, to be talking about a way of life without the state interfering with that freedom,” she said.
According to lawyer Rob Frommer of the Institute for Justice, the firm representing the yoga instructors who filed the suit, yoga teacher training is protected by the First Amendment.
“Teaching is speech, pure and simple,” Frommer said. “Government should have powerful justification before interfering with it.”
Kirsten Nelson, spokeswoman for the state education council, said Virginia law requires the agency to regulate schools that taught skills that could be monetized. She said the measures also would protect consumers, providing financial protections for instructors in training and physical protections for the students they went on to teach.
“Not just anybody can open up a school,” said Bobby McInnes of Bikram’s Yoga College of India in Beverly Hills, Calif. “Anybody that wants to teach has to go through training.” Aspiring instructors at the college are trained in the various postures and even human anatomy to avoid injuring their students.
But Frommer was skeptical of attempts from state officials to regulate an industry he said they didn’t understand.
“The idea that some bureaucrat sitting in Richmond who has no experience with yoga is going to decide whether you’re teaching yoga properly is ludicrous.”
Although the education agency plans to move forward, it will wait to see if lawmakers approve legislation in their 2010 General Assembly session. Nelson said the agency notified yoga teacher trainers about the coming certification requirements a year ago.
