Proposed Christian charter school sues Knoxville so they can indoctrinate kids with public money

Wilberforce Academy wants to turn a religious mission field into a taxpayer-funded charter school—despite laws explicitly forbidding it

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A proposed Christian school in Tennessee is suing the Knox County Board of Education for not handing over taxpayer money and allowing it to become a public religious charter school… even though that would be blatantly illegal.

Students at a religious school (image via Adobe Spark)

According to the lawsuit, filed in federal court on November 30, the non-profit Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville wanted to launch a charter school for grades K-8 in Knoxville that would open in the fall of 2027. They made clear to officials that the 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 add 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, or anything else is a much lower priority, though they say elsewhere in the lawsuit that, after all the Jesus stuff, they plan to focus on civics education—William Wilberforce was an abolitionist, after all—and entrepreneurialism.

All teachers at this school would have to share its fundamentalist beliefs—so no Jews, atheists, Muslims, gay people, etc. would be hired on staff.

The problem, they say, is that Tennessee law prevents them from using taxpayer dollars from opening 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.”

This makes 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.

The lawsuit said the people behind Wilberforce Academy submitted a letter of intent to set up their school on November 25, 2025 knowing full well they couldn’t get approved.

… 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…

There’s 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.

The Academy even cites a handful of church/state separation groups in their lawsuit, saying that there’s organized opposition to their theocratic fantasy:

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.

They’re goddamn right they can’t open up without a lawsuit because religious charter schools shouldn’t exist—and cannot legally exist. As I’ve written before, public money should never be siphoned into sectarian projects that explicitly reject the kinds of obligations public schools have: inclusivity, non-discrimination, professional standards, and a curriculum grounded in fact rather than dogma.

This isn’t about school choice. It’s a deliberate attempt to dismantle the wall between church and state.

The lawsuit attempts to argue that there’s nothing wrong with using tax dollars for religious schools. In fact, the lawyers argue, Tennessee has a voucher program that allows public dollars to be spent at private schools (including private religious schools). But that’s not a fair comparison. The laws regarding charter schools in Tennessee are much more clear cut and they don’t involve private schools at all.

If a court ever opened that door, it would be next to impossible to close. The end result wouldn’t be a richer educational landscape. It would be a broken system where public dollars fund private belief. And that would almost entire be conservative Christian belief.

The lawsuit pretends this isn’t really the problem and that they’re defending religious minorities. They say the laws against aid going to sectarian schools were “born of bigotry” and passed due to hostility against Catholics and Jews. But the fact is that public money going to public schools doesn’t discriminate against any religious group. That’s the whole point. Public schools welcome students of different religions without trying to convert them. This school claims it’s open to students of different religions, too, but they very much want to convert them. That’s why they don’t deserve public funding.

Knox County is under no obligation to green-light this travesty of a school. 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 must not play the same game. There’s way too much at stake.

Incidentally, the law firm that filed this lawsuit, Consovoy McCarthy, is a small right-wing firm with ties to the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. CNN reported that “Five of its current nine partners clerked for conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.” WKRN added that the same law firm also wrote a letter to the Supreme Court on behalf of former Oklahoma attorneys general who supported that state’s push to green-light St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. (SCOTUS was deadlocked 4-4 after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, so the Catholic charter school could not move forward.)

But it’s unclear if church/state groups need to get involved in this case because Knox County has not yet rejected the application of Wilberforce Academy; the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare Tennessee’s law that charter schools be secular unconstitutional so that the county cannot cite it when rejecting their school.

One news outlet did get this interesting reaction from a Knox County Board of Education member Steven Triplett:

“As a Christian, my hope is that more students in our community come to know Jesus as their Savior and Lord. That matters far more to me than anything else. I will always support the advancement of the Gospel. If the board takes a vote on this school I will recuse myself from voting due to personal ties to the school’s founders, yet even still I will always support Christ in the public square.”

Somehow, that’s good news because Triplett says he won’t vote on this, even though his views make clear that he has no business sitting on the board of a public school board. But the other board members are well within their rights to reject this school. It’s not a complicated case. Some charter schools are just bad ideas. Some, like this one, are just flat-out illegal. Christians are not owed their own taxpayer-funded schools just because they feel like indoctrinating kids with other people’s money.

The Knoxville News-Sentinel also noted some other issues with their application:

While Wilberforce’s dispute seemingly is with the state, the nonprofit chose to sue the Knox County Board of Education.

“Under these laws and policies, the Knox County Board of Education cannot, and will not, give Wilberforce an equal chance to become a charter school,” Wilberforce said.

The nonprofit filed organizational paperwork with the state Nov. 21 under registered agent William D. Edwards, a West Knoxville attorney, who could not immediately be reached for comment. The paperwork filed listed the organization’s “Religious Type” as “Non-Religious.”

There is one other element of this lawsuit worth discussing. Wilberforce Academy says that a secular education is inferior… but that if they’re not allowed to open up their religious indoctrination camp, they still want to open a secular one:

… if it lacks the right to operate a charter school in a religious manner, Wilberforce would apply to establish a nonreligious, nonsectarian charter school instead before the next deadline for the next school year. Wilberforce believes that helping students succeed academically and learn good habits is an important act of Christian charity, even if accomplished through a secular education. Wilberforce further believes that a strong character-forming nonreligious education can prepare students to receive the gospel at a later time or outside of school. In Wilberforce’s view, providing a good nonreligious education would still glorify God by preparing students’ hearts and minds to serve God, though in a lesser way that falls short of a proper, explicitly Christian education.

They claim they wouldn’t be allowed to do that either, though, because the law prohibits groups with a religious mission from operating a charter school—even a secular one. That, at least, could be the opening these religious zealots need. But when everything else they’re saying points to how Christian they want to make this school, it’s hard to believe they could actually operate anything without bringing faith into it. But they also haven’t submitted that application, so who knows.

What Wilberforce Academy is attempting here isn’t about innovation. They just want to seize public funds in order to undermine the very concept of a secular education system. (It’s not surprising that their lawyers’ biggest win at the Supreme Court was undermining affirmative action.) If a group openly devoted to evangelizing children can redefine itself as worthy of public dollars, then public education means nothing anymore.

Religious charter schools are not 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.

That’s why courts must reject this strategy. It’s not just that the law requires it, but the stakes really are existential. Public schools are meant for everyone, and charter schools are meant to protect that tradition. Wilberforce proudly rejects that worthwhile cause. This is another test case, not of whether Christians can educate their children as they wish—because they already can—but of whether religious institutions can obtain state funding while ignoring all the obligations that come with serving the public. If the courts fail this test, the damage won’t be limited to one county in Tennessee; it will reverberate well beyond Knoxville.

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