A federal judge has stepped in to temporarily halt seemingly blatant anti-Christian discrimination in a suburban Seattle public school district.
Lifewise Academy, a faith-based nonprofit that provides off-campus Christian extracurricular activities to students with written permission from parents, has been the target of alleged intentional bias at the hands of Everett Public Schools officials in Washington state.
Lifewise founder Joel Penton said in an interview with CBN News that things “went very smoothly” at the beginning of his organization’s partnership with Everett Public Schools, and that dozens of families have participated through Lifewise.
But things changed last year when a board member took issue with Lifewise’s student services. At the Dec. 9 board meeting, Charles Adkins made it clear that he harbored a personal vendetta against Christian Mission, and the church wrote to the board to “address allegations as to whether (Adkins’) comments were motivated by hostility toward Lifewise Academy.”
“I want to make it very, very, very clear that, yes, I do, in fact, have animosity toward Lifewise Academy,” Adkins said. “This is an organization of homophobic bullies who are actively and willingly participating in efforts to implement an authoritarian theocracy.”
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In late April, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the school district, which oversees about 21,000 students from 27 schools, from choosing Lifewise with unduly onerous restrictions and appears to have prevented students from participating in off-campus Bible instruction during school hours.
“Targeting out-of-school program operations solely on religious grounds is a direct violation of the First Amendment,” said Jeremy Diss, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, which is representing Lifewise in the lawsuit.
Penton said the district imposed onerous rules on Lifewise in at least three ways.
For other clubs and organizations, parents must sign one permission form at the beginning of the school year that allows their child to participate in the group throughout the year. In the case of Lifewise, the district began requiring parents to sign a new permission form every week, which Penton said is a “major hurdle” that only applies to Lifewise.
Second, he explained that Lifewise was prohibited from participating in events promoting to parents the organization’s offerings to children with their permission. It also prohibited Lifewise from posting flyers on school grounds, as other groups are allowed to do.
This was the third restriction, according to Penton, which he felt was the most ridiculous and even called it “ridiculous.”
“When you send something home with a student, whether it’s a worksheet or a Bible, if you’re sending a Bible back to a student in class, the school says it has to be returned in a sealed envelope,” he says. “Of course, it gives the impression that there’s something dangerous about it, and it gives the impression that children have to hide their faith.”
Penton told CBN News that the organization first tried to address the friction “quietly” and explained to officials that their actions were not constitutional. But they didn’t move, so Lifewise filed a lawsuit against the school district.
On April 24, the court said that for now, the school must allow Lifewise to participate in fairs, post flyers on school grounds, use permission slips in the same manner as other extracurricular groups, and allow students to read Lifewise materials during school hours when they are reading “non-academic materials.”
Watch the full conversation with Penton in the video above.
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