Washington School District Must Apologize and Pay $275,000 Over Bibles Hidden in Sealed Envelopes

A Washington state school district has agreed to apologize in public, train its board in religious liberty and pay $275,000 in attorney's fees after a lawsuit over how it treated a Bible program.

According to Fox News, the Everett School District required elementary students to keep Bibles in sealed envelopes. The dispute involved LifeWise Academy, a group that provides privately funded Bible instruction to public school students during the school day, with parental permission, off school property. LifeWise founder and CEO Joel Penton told Fox News Digital that the program had operated in Everett for several years and served dozens of families before the school board changed its policies.

Penton described the changes as "pretty transparently discriminatory." Instead of signing one permission slip for a semester or year, he said, parents had to hand-deliver a slip every week. He said the program was barred from some community fairs that other student groups could join. And he said students were told that any worksheet or Bible received at the program had to come back to school in a sealed envelope "so that other students wouldn't be exposed to them." Parents told him their children felt they were being told to hide their faith, "as though it was something to be ashamed of."

LifeWise sued after trying to resolve the matter with school officials and later through an attorney. The group says a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the district in April.

Under the settlement announced Wednesday, according to LifeWise, the district must change its policies, train school board members in religious liberty, post a written public apology on its website for six months and pay the fees. The group quoted a district statement saying that comments at board meetings about LifeWise, including by directors, "were offensive and hurtful to the families participating," and that the district offers "a sincere apology."

The district sees it differently in part. It told Fox News Digital there had been no change to its policy and that student release guidelines were "updated to comply with the terms of the settlement." Everett Public Schools also said on its website that parents have the right to seek release of students for religious instruction off school property under state and federal law.

Stephanie Taub, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, which represented LifeWise, called it "a tremendous victory not only for our clients but for all religious release time programs."