Everett School District in Washington must apologize and pay $275,000 after requiring students to return Bibles in sealed envelopes, a settlement LifeWise says vindicates families told to hide their faith.
The district settled a lawsuit brought by LifeWise Academy over barriers to a voluntary, off-campus Bible program for elementary students, agreeing to a public written apology, religious liberty training for board members, policy updates, and $275,000 in attorney’s fees.
Fox News reported the deal after LifeWise challenged rules that required weekly hand-delivered permission slips and sealed envelopes for Bibles and worksheets so other students would not be “exposed” to them. Parents told the group their children felt pressured to conceal their faith.
LifeWise had operated in Everett for several years with parental permission, serving dozens of families through privately funded instruction during the school day. Founder and CEO Joel Penton said the board later changed practices in ways he called transparently discriminatory.
He described the weekly slip rule as designed to shut the program down by making it impractical for working parents who once signed once for a semester or year.
Penton told reporters what parents heard from their kids after the materials rule took hold.
"I also heard from parents that their children felt like they were being told they had to hide their faith when they were told they had to put their Bibles and things in envelopes as though it was something to be ashamed of, and I know that was very hurtful as well."
He also said the board required students returning from the off-site class to keep worksheets and even a Bible sealed.
"And then they also told students that if they received any worksheets or even a Bible at our program, when they came back to the school, that those had to come back in sealed envelopes so that other students wouldn't be exposed to them."
Penton said LifeWise first tried to resolve the dispute directly with officials, then through an attorney, before filing suit. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in April against the district’s restrictions, according to the organization.
That court step fits a wider pattern in which judges have pushed back when officials single out faith groups, including cases where a federal judge punished officials who targeted Christian speech.
The New York Post detailed the same settlement terms: the apology, board training, fee payment, and the earlier injunction that cleared the path to the deal.
Under the agreement announced by LifeWise, Everett must post a public written apology on its website for six months, send school board members through religious liberty training, revise guidelines on religious activities and student release, and cover $275,000 in legal fees.
The district’s own apology language, quoted in the settlement announcement, addressed board-meeting remarks.
"The District recognizes that comments made at various Board meetings that concerned LifeWise, including by Directors, were offensive and hurtful to the families participating in LifeWise programming. For that, the District and its Board of Directors offer a sincere apology."
Just The News reported the injunction had found viewpoint discrimination and that the settlement requires equal treatment with secular groups for advertising and release time, while avoiding a trial set for next year. District officials framed the outcome as following the injunction’s guidance.
Barbara Smith Tyson of Bryan Cave, quoted in that coverage, put the stakes plainly: anti-religious sentiment by government officials, especially when paired with facially discriminatory policies, has no place in a free society.
Stephanie Taub, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, which represented LifeWise, called the result a win beyond one district.
"Religious discrimination has no place in public schools."
She added that the settlement is “a tremendous victory not only for our clients but for all religious release time programs.”
Those programs rest on a simple American idea: parents may direct a child’s moral formation without the school treating faith as contraband. Justice Gorsuch has defended religious pluralism as a founding principle for exactly that reason.
Everett Public Schools struck a careful tone after the deal. In a statement to Fox News Digital, the district said: “There were no changes to the policy. The Student Release Guidelines have been updated to comply with the terms of the settlement.”
Its website statement affirms that parents and guardians may seek release for off-site religious instruction under District Policy 2340 and Procedure 2340P, rules it says align with Washington’s RCW 28A.600.025 and federal law, so long as the class stays off campus and does not disrupt regular classroom time.
That legal backdrop did not stop the sealed-envelope and weekly-slip practices LifeWise challenged, or the board comments the district later called offensive and hurtful. Taxpayers now cover the six-figure fee bill while board members sit through training the district would not have scheduled on its own.
School fights over conscience keep landing in court. A Portland mother sued her district after officials barred her from her child’s graduation in a curriculum dispute, another reminder that families who push back often need lawyers to be heard.
LifeWise’s model is narrow: private funding, parental opt-in, instruction off school property. Penton said convenience during the school day is why many families enroll. Turning a one-time permission into a weekly in-person chore, he argued, was meant to choke participation.
He also said the envelope rule sent a message to elementary students that Scripture itself was something other children must not see. Whether district leaders intended shame or only “exposure” control, the practical effect was the same for the kids carrying the sealed packets.
Release-time Bible programs are not new, and courts have long drawn a line between school-sponsored religion and private instruction parents choose. Everett’s settlement does not invent that line. It enforces it after a federal judge had already stepped in.
Similar pressure shows up outside classrooms. A Michigan hospital paid $410,000 to a physician assistant fired over a religious objection, another case where an institution treated faith as a problem to manage rather than a right to respect.
In Everett, the district still insists its core policy never changed and that state and federal law already protected off-site religious release. The injunction, the fee payment, the six-month apology post, and the mandatory training tell a clearer story about how the challenged practices landed in court.
Penton summed up the permission-slip shift in plain terms: parents enroll because the program fits the school day; forcing a new slip every week made that promise hollow for many families.
For conservative readers who watch public schools, the sequence is familiar. A lawful, parent-directed program runs for years. Local officials tighten rules in ways that fall hardest on the religious option. Families feel the stigma. Lawyers and a federal judge reverse the pressure. The district pens a check and posts an apology.
Washington’s Everett district learned that lesson the expensive way. When schools treat a child’s Bible like contraband, the Constitution, and the courts, still get the last word.
