A national controversy over religion in public schools is brewing in Washington State, as a Bible education group is threatening to sue the Everett School District over what it calls discriminatory restrictions on its off-campus program.
Attorneys representing LifeWise Academy, which runs an optional, off-site Bible education class for students during school hours, sent a letter to Everett Public Schools demanding immediate policy changes or face a federal lawsuit. The group claims the district’s rules violate its constitutional rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion by unfairly targeting its program.
The core of the dispute revolves around the district’s policies for non-school-sponsored organizations. LifeWise Academy, which operates in over a thousand schools nationwide, launched its first Puget Sound chapter at Everett’s Emerson Elementary in January 2025. The program relies on a “release time for religious instruction” policy, which is permissible under a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing students to be dismissed from class to attend religious instruction off school grounds.
However, LifeWise claims the Everett School District is placing “onerous” barriers on its ability to communicate with parents and students. In its letter to the district, the group pointed to several restrictions it believes are unfair. These include prohibiting the organization from participating in the district’s annual community resource fair, forbidding the placement of flyers in school lobbies, and requiring students to keep any materials received from LifeWise in a sealed envelope upon returning to school.
The letter also criticizes the district’s process for student enrollment, which reportedly requires parents and guardians to send a new permission note to teachers every single week for their child to attend. LifeWise argues this permission slip policy is “needlessly complicated.”
Ultimately, the legal group is demanding that Everett Public Schools retract its specific guidelines for religious-related activities and amend three sections of its policy to “apply without regard to a student’s or organization’s viewpoint or the content of speech.” The policies in question cover the use of school resources, the distribution of religious material, and the conducting of religious services or assemblies.
The attorneys for LifeWise Academy—who include legal counsel from the nonprofit organization First Liberty Institute, which focuses on religious freedom cases—gave the district a deadline of December 5 to provide written assurance that it would change its policies. Failure to meet that deadline would result in a recommendation for litigation to protect the group’s First Amendment rights.
This is not the first time the Everett School District has faced a legal challenge over religious expression. Back in 2014, a student at Cascade High School sued the district after being suspended multiple times for loudly proselytizing and handing out religious tracts on school grounds. That dispute was ultimately settled, with a judge upholding some of the school’s time and place restrictions on distributing materials while striking down a requirement that students must have produced the material themselves.
For the current dispute, a spokesperson for Everett Public Schools confirmed receiving the correspondence but declined to comment further, citing the ongoing review by the district’s legal counsel. Meanwhile, the community remains divided. While LifeWise seeks equal access, a separate group of parents, retired teachers, and local clergy have publicly urged the school board to rescind the “release time” policy entirely, expressing concern over the separation of church and state and the emotional impact of the classes on some students.
As the deadline approaches, the district finds itself in the middle of a high-stakes, two-sided legal and public relations battle that highlights the persistent tension between religious liberty and the constitutional wall separating church and state in public education. The outcome will likely set a new precedent for how religious groups can interact with school systems across the region.