Elementary school children in Washington state were told to seal their Bibles inside envelopes before returning to class.
A school board member behind that policy admitted on the record he held animus toward their Bible program.
A federal court read that admission and just made the district pay.
LifeWise Academy Took Everett Public Schools to Court for Religious Discrimination
At a December 2025 Everett Washington School Board meeting, Charles Adkins addressed the room and said, "I want to make it very, extremely, abundantly clear, that yes, I do in fact hold animus toward LifeWise Academy."
LifeWise Academy is a nonprofit that provides voluntary, privately funded Bible instruction to public school students – off school property, during school hours, with written parental permission.
Every element of that program is legal in all 50 states.
Released time religious education has been legal since 1952, when the Supreme Court ruled in Zorach v. Clauson that these programs do not violate the First Amendment.
That 74-year-old constitutional precedent didn't stop Everett Public Schools from targeting LifeWise with restrictions no other student organization in the district faced.
The district required LifeWise families to hand-deliver a fresh permission slip every single week – instead of the one-time annual permission every other program received.
They barred LifeWise from community fairs where every other student group had a table.
And they told elementary school children returning from Bible class to seal their Bibles and worksheets in envelopes before stepping back through the school doors.
LifeWise CEO Joel Penton said parents reported their children "felt like they were being told they had to hide their faith" – treated as if Christianity were something to be ashamed of.
First Liberty Institute Won a $275,000 Settlement and Mandatory Religious Liberty Training
First Liberty Institute filed a federal lawsuit in December 2025.
By April 2026, U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King had seen enough.
She issued a preliminary injunction against Everett Public Schools, ruling the district could not deny LifeWise "the same access" given to every other program operating in its schools.
Her written ruling named it: viewpoint discrimination – not a procedural technicality, but one of the most straightforward First Amendment violations in constitutional law.
The Supreme Court settled this 25 years ago in Good News Club v. Milford Central School: any school that lets secular groups in cannot keep religious ones out.
Everett didn't learn.
On October 13, 2026, the school board voted to settle.
The terms: $275,000 in attorney's fees pulled from the district's general fund, meaning local taxpayers are personally funding the consequences of their school board's anti-Christian agenda.
The settlement forces board members into religious liberty training and requires the district to rewrite its policies on religious activities.
Everett Public Schools must also post a public apology on its website and leave it there for six months.
The settlement acknowledged that comments made at its board meetings "were offensive and hurtful to the families participating in LifeWise programming."
The board approved the settlement without admitting wrongdoing.
They just signed the check.
Everett Is Not Alone and Schools Nationwide Are Targeting Bible Programs
This was not a policy disagreement.
Charles Adkins announced his hostility at an open meeting, on the record, with a microphone – and his district built regulations around that hostility to shut the Bible program down.
A federal judge said so in writing.
School districts across the country run the same operation – bury a religious program under paperwork until it can't survive, then call it neutral policy.
LifeWise Academy now operates in 35 states, reaching 50,000 students every week.
Every one of those communities has at least one Charles Adkins somewhere in the building – someone who believes shielding children from the Bible is part of the job description.
Charles Adkins was just the one who couldn't keep it off the record.
First Liberty Institute's Stephanie Taub said: "Religious discrimination has no place in public schools."
It's the First Amendment – and the Everett taxpayers who just wrote a $275,000 check for one school board member's contempt for it ought to remember his name in November.
Sources:
- Rachel del Guidice, "Washington school district that forced kids to hide Bibles in sealed envelopes must apologize, pay $275K," Fox News, October 16, 2026.
- "Everett School District Settles After Religious Nonprofit Sues Over Violation of First Amendment Rights," Daily Signal, October 19, 2026.
- "School district pays $275,000, changes policies to settle Bible study discrimination lawsuit," Just the News, October 15, 2026.
- "Washington state school district ordered to pay $275,000, apologize after requiring Christian students to conceal Bibles," The Post Millennial, October 2026.
- First Liberty Institute, "LifeWise Everett, Washington," firstliberty.org, October 2026.
