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.
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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.”
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.”
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