First Liberty recently sent a letter to the Everett Public Schools Board in Washington on behalf of two LifeWise Academy program directors, Darcie Hammer and Sarah Sweeny. They’re asking the school district to stop discriminating against the organization and cease implementing burdensome policies against parents.
LifeWise Academy is a non-profit organization with a mission to bring Bible teaching to children in public schools through a release time program. Under the law, students can be released to receive religious education, as long as the program is off school property, privately funded and parents give their permission.
Despite LifeWise meeting all the necessary criteria, the school district has created obstacles for families who want their children to be in the program. Some of these hurdles include prohibiting LifeWise from participating in community events and displaying its flyers. It also requires LifeWise students to conceal any written materials they receive from the program in a sealed envelope in their backpacks.
The school district is also requiring parents to follow a complicated and burdensome permission-slip policy, forcing them to reauthorize their students’ participation weekly. No other organization, parent, or child who participates in secular clubs or activities has had to meet any of these conditions.
Sarah and Darcie tried to participate in the community resource fair and display LifeWise flyers in the school office. But they were turned away. However, other groups were allowed to participate. The school office refused to keep a stack of LifeWise flyers because they considered it to be “distribution,” while simultaneously displaying almost 20 other flyers to be viewed and picked up by students and parents.
In the letter, our attorneys state that the school district’s actions against LifeWise are unconstitutional. We make it clear that advertising certain school programs while refusing to promote religious ones is discrimination and completely unacceptable.
The Supreme Court in Zorach v. Clauson has made it clear: parents have the legal right to choose release-time religious instruction for their children during school hours. School districts that accommodate parents who want their students to participate in release-time religious instruction, as the Supreme Court said, follow “the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs.”
So, there’s no reason for the school district to create these obstacles. In fact, the Supreme Court has warned school officials that they cannot “be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence.” According to the nation’s highest court, creating this sort of bureaucratic red tape reads “into the Bill of Rights…a philosophy of hostility to religion.”
And to make it worse, at school board meetings, LifeWise and its supporters were accused of “spreading hate” and “indoctrinating children,” although it is a completely voluntary program.
We are demanding that at its next meeting, the school board do the right thing and retract its harmful guidelines and stop censoring and violating the free speech and free exercise rights of religious community groups, including LifeWise, parents and students.
