Federal judge opens door to taxpayer-funded religious charter schools in Tennessee

A ruling for Wilberforce Academy could let religious schools seek public charter funding despite state rules requiring charter schools to be nonreligious.

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A federal judge in Tennessee has opened the door to taxpayer-funded religious schools, saying that a state law requiring charter schools to be nonsectarian and nonreligious is unconstitutional. Unless the decision is reversed, it would be a disaster for public education and church/state separation.

Wilberforce Academy (via school website)

This saga began about a year ago, when Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville wanted to launch a charter school for grades K-8 that would open in the fall of 2027. They made clear to officials at the Knox County Board of Education that their main goal wasn’t to educate children in a meaningful way but rather to indoctrinate kids: “Christianity lies at the center of Wilberforce’s mission.” They added that their charter “affirms the truth of the Apostles’ Creed and the inerrancy and infallibility of the Holy Bible” and that “a purely secular education is necessarily an inferior one.”

Above all, Christ serves as the cornerstone of Wilberforce Academy’s mission, guiding the formation of students who are academically prepared, spiritually grounded, and equipped to lead lives of purpose. Wilberforce exists so that students can come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, grow in a personal relationship with Him, and be equipped to make Him known wherever God leads them.

Apparently, teaching kids math, science, literacy, and anything else was a much lower priority… though they later said that, after all the Jesus stuff, they planned to focus on civics education—William Wilberforce was an abolitionist, after all—and entrepreneurialism. All teachers at this school would also have to hold fundamentalist Christian beliefs—so no Jews, atheists, Muslims, gay people, etc. would be hired on staff.

The problem, they explained, was that Tennessee law prevented them from using taxpayer dollars to open up their doors. Public charter schools are supposed to be “nonsectarian” and “nonreligious.” Furthermore, any charter school cannot “promote the agenda of any religious denomination or religiously affiliated entity.”

That made perfect sense, of course. Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to advance religion (or atheism). It’s in the Constitution. Courts have repeatedly affirmed this, even if the U.S. Supreme Court has chipped away at that wall of separation in recent decades.

But the Knox County Board of Education was bound to reject their application based on the law, so a preemptive lawsuit against the board was filed. (Because the board intended to just play it safe and request a waiver from the state allowing this school to be approved, a coalition of church/state separation groups intervened in the case in order to argue that charter schools should not be religious at all.)

The lawsuit from Wilberforce Academy said their people submitted a letter of intent to set up their school on November 25, 2025 knowing full well they couldn’t get approved. Their letter admitted that, under current law, they didn’t meet the state’s requirements. But if that law was nullified, they were ready to move forward with an application.

… that letter, which must be submitted on the State’s form, makes clear that Wilbeforce [sic] cannot and will not be allowed to open or apply to open a charter school… The “Sponsor Eligibility” section of the mandatory form states that a sponsor must meet the eligibility requirements established by the Tennessee Charter Schools Act… So Wilberforce’s letter had to admit that it does not meet those requirements because it “does ‘promote the agenda of any religious denomination or religiously affiliated entity.’”

…

Wilberforce Academy is able and ready to apply for charter status, once a court orders Defendants to stop discriminating against religious schools and sponsors. If a court ordered adequate relief, Wilberforce would immediately apply to sponsor a Christian charter school for the earliest school year it could open…

But there was no discrimination happening here. Just as we saw in Oklahoma, where religious zealots have repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to launch religious charter schools, there’s good reason for public dollars to support public education. And public education is not pro-atheist education, no matter how much Christian liars want to claim otherwise.

Wilberforce Academy ignored those principles. Instead, they cited a handful of church/state separation groups in their lawsuit, saying that there was organized opposition to their theocratic fantasy. That’s why they needed a judge to step in and rule in the school’s favor.

National secularist groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the American Civil Liberties Union are committed to bringing legals challenges to any religious charter school that gets approved or opens its doors. When Oklahoma approved a religious charter school, for instance, these organizations sued the following month alleging violations of the Establishment Clause… Without judicial confirmation of its rights, no religious charter school can safely apply, open, or operate without an inevitable lawsuit by outside groups or a cutoff of funding by the State.

The lawsuit argued that there was nothing wrong with using tax dollars for religious schools. In fact, the school’s lawyers said, Tennessee has a voucher program that allows public dollars to be spent at private schools (including private religious schools).

Sadly, a federal judge agrees with that logic.

U.S. District Judge Charles E. Atchley Jr. (a Trump nominee) said in a ruling last week that because Tennessee allows voucher money to be used at private religious schools, they can’t shut the door on religious charter schools.

“Once the state opens that program to private participants, however, it may not prohibit them from receiving a public benefit solely because of their intended religious use,” Atchley wrote.

“The First Amendment does not permit the state to require an organization to abandon its religious beliefs or practices as the price of participating in a public benefit program.”

It didn’t matter to the judge that Wilberforce Academy hadn’t even submitted an application (and arguably had no legal standing). They said they were ready to move forward with the process but the law was in their way, therefore they needed a judge to rule on the law itself, and that’s what he was doing.

Atchley added that none of this means Wilberforce will be approved as a charter school—only that it can’t be rejected because it’s religious:

This, of course, does not mean that [the Knox County Board of Education] will ultimately approve Wilberforce’s application. KCBE may find other nondiscriminatory reasons to deny Wilberforce from operating a charter school; however, it cannot do so because of the Act’s Nonsectarian Requirement.

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The First Amendment does not permit Tennessee to open its charter school program to private participants and then exclude them because they seek to exercise their religion. “That is discrimination against religion”... To be sure, Tennessee retains broad authority to structure its public-education system—and it need not create a charter school program at all. But having chosen to make that opportunity generally available to private participants, the State cannot condition participation on the surrender of a constitutionally protected right, no matter how the program is described. Accordingly, Tennessee’s Nonsectarian Requirement for its otherwise generally available charter school program violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

This will almost certainly be appealed. And it’s possible the board of education still says no to the school. But despite all that, this is an unmitigated disaster.

It opens the floodgates to other religious schools in Tennessee applying to become charter schools and receive taxpayer dollars. The result of this ruling, if it stands, won’t be a richer educational landscape. It’ll be a broken system where public dollars fund private belief—inevitably conservative Christian belief.

Knox County is under no obligation to green-light this travesty, so let’s hope they find other reasons to say no to the application. If Christians want to stunt the educational growth of children, they’re welcome to do it on their own time, with their own money, with the help of parents who also don’t value a real education. But the government shouldn’t be playing the same game. There’s way too much at stake.

The Christian school is, of course, thrilled by this decision:

“(The ruling) advances educational freedom and opens the door for more children, regardless of their family’s financial circumstances, to access a tuition-free, Christ-centered education. We are grateful for this victory and excited about what it means for the future of Christian education in Tennessee,” Wilberforce Executive Director Zach Wishart wrote in a press release.

“We look forward to opening the doors of Wilberforce Academy, and we hope that our efforts will pave the way for other Christian charter-school operators to join us in Tennessee.”

As I said before, religious charter schools aren’t some natural next step in “school choice.” They’re nothing more than a Trojan horse intended to destroy the wall between church and state from the inside. That’s why they want government approval to open a school that openly excludes non-believing teachers, evangelizes students, and reshapes the entire curriculum around a conservative Christian worldview, all while insisting they are owed public dollars to do it.

If this becomes the new normal, every religious extremist with a business plan and right-wing lawyers will demand the same. Indeed, as the Christian Post notes, this is already happening in the state:

Another aspiring religious charter school in a different Tennessee county had more success. Earlier this year, the Jackson-Madison County School System approved the request of Union Academy, a “faith-based Christian college preparatory institution,” to begin serving as a charter school in the 2027-28 school year.

An appeals court needs to shut all this down before it gets worse.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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