First Liberty Institute and the law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP filed the federal lawsuit against the Everett School District on behalf of LifeWise Academy, a nonprofit that brings Bible-based education to public school students during the school day through "released time" programs that empower local communities.
In 1952, the Supreme Court ruled that public school students can be released from public schools during school hours to attend religious classes if the program is off school property and privately funded and as long as the students have parental permission.
In this case, First Liberty attorney Holly Randall tells AFN that families wanted to be involved in LifeWise, but the district has imposed subjective standards and unfair regulations that violate the First Amendment and target religious groups and the families.
"Some members of the community were not happy with LifeWise's presence, and so the school district started putting all sorts of different barriers in their way, making it a really sort of onerous process for families to send their children or parents to direct their children to attend LifeWise Academy," she reports.
The school board adopted regulations prohibiting LifeWise from participating in community events and displaying its flyers, requiring LifeWise students to conceal any written materials they receive from LifeWise in a sealed envelope in their backpacks, and requiring LifeWise parents to follow a complicated and burdensome permission-slip policy, namely, weekly reauthorization for students to participate in LifeWise.
No other school program requires similar regulations, and according to the lawsuit, “Those actions contravene our most precious liberties."
First Liberty sent a letter to the school district in November to see if officials would be willing to solve this outside of court, but Randall says they were not interested. Instead, the demand letter "spawned some members of the community to say some really hateful things."
Specifically, Director Charles Adkins publicly responded to the letter at the December 9 board meeting by saying, "First off … I want to make it very, extremely, abundantly clear that yes, I do in fact hold animus toward LifeWise Academy. It is an organization of homophobic bullies who are active and willing participants in the efforts to bring about an authoritarian theocracy."
Randall says the lawsuit displays that kind of "animus-fueled environment" Christians are dealing with in Everett.
