A federal judge has stepped in to temporarily halt seemingly blatant anti-Christian discrimination in a public school district just outside Seattle.
Lifewise Academy, a faith-based nonprofit providing off-campus Christian extracurricular activities to students with written parental permission, has been the target of a purportedly purposeful prejudice at the hands of authorities within Everett Public Schools in Washington state.
Speaking with CBN News, Lifewise founder Joel Penton said things “went very smoothly” at the start of the partnership between his organization and Everett Public Schools, with dozens of families participating in activities through Lifewise.
That all took a turn last year, though, when one board member took issue with Lifewise’s offerings to students. During a Dec. 9 board meeting, Charles Adkins made very clear he had a personal vendetta against the Christian ministry, which had sent a letter to the board to “address the claim about whether [Adkins’] comments are motivated by animus toward Lifewise Academy.”
“I want to make it very, extremely, abundantly clear that, yes, I do, in fact, hold animus toward Lifewise Academy,” said Adkins. “It is an organization of homophobic bullies, who are active and willing participants in the efforts to bring about 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 some 21,000 students across 27 schools — from singling out Lifewise with overly burdensome restrictions, seemingly to prevent students from participating in off-campus Bible instruction during school hours.
Jeremy Dys, senior counsel for First Liberty Institute, which is representing Lifewise in this case, said, “Targeting the operation of an out-of-school program just because it’s religious is a direct violation of the First Amendment.”
According to Penton, the district had been placing onerous rules on Lifewise in at least three ways.
For other clubs or organizations, a parent is required to sign a single permission slip at the start of the school year, allowing his or her child to participate in that group for the duration of the year. For Lifewise, the district began mandating parents sign new permission slips every single week — a “major obstacle” that only applied to Lifewise, Penton said.
Secondly, he explained, Lifewise was barred from participating in events where the organization could promote to parents what it offers kids who have been granted parental permission. It also disallowed Lifewise from hanging flyers on school property, as other groups are allowed to do.
It was the third restriction, Penton said, he found the most ridiculous, even calling it “comical.”
“When we send things home with students, whether it’s worksheets or even Bibles — if we send a Bible back with students from our class, the school says it has to come back in a sealed envelope,” he said. “Which, of course, gives the impression that it’s somehow dangerous or it certainly gives the impression that kids need to conceal their faith.”
Penton told CBN News the organization first tried to address the friction “quietly,” explaining to officials their actions were not constitutional. They didn’t budge, though, so Lifewise filed a lawsuit against the school district.
On April 24, the court said the schools must, for now, allow Lifewise to participate in fairs, post flyers on school property, use permission slips in the same manner as other extracurricular groups, and permit students to read Lifewise materials during school time when students are reading “non-scholastic materials.”
Watch our full conversation with Penton in the video above.
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