Christian charter school wins major religious liberty victory in Tennessee

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, November 10, 2026

A federal judge has ruled that Tennessee’s prohibition on religiously affiliated charter schools is unconstitutional as efforts to set up religious charter schools continue across the United States.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville issued a ruling Friday siding with Wilberforce Academy in its legal challenge against the Knox County Board of Education over the state’s ban on religious charter schools, which barred the Christian nonprofit from applying to open a charter school in the county. Judge Charles Atchley, appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, authored the opinion, which bars the board from enforcing the law’s nonsectarian requirement.

“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,” he wrote. “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 option 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.” 

Atchley concluded that “Tennessee’s Nonsectarian Requirement for its otherwise generally available charter school program violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.” While he ruled in favor of Wilberforce Academy, he declined the institution’s request to require the Knox County Board of Education to pay nominal damages. 

The decision repeatedly cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Carson v. Makindecision, which ruled that Maine cannot bar parents from using funds under the state’s tuition assistance program to send their children to religious schools. It also included references to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 Fulton v. City of Philadelphiadecision, which ruled that Philadelphia could not exclude Catholic Social Services from its foster care program because the agency, citing its religious beliefs, would not certify same-sex couples as foster parents.

Wilberforce Academy, which seeks to provide “Christian educational services” by operating a “Christian charter school,” challenged provisions of the Tennessee Charter School Act of 2002 prohibiting religious nonprofit organizations from sponsoring charter schools and requiring charter schools to “[o]perate as public, nonsectarian, [and] nonreligious” schools in a lawsuit filed in December 2025. 

Wilberforce submitted a letter of intent to the Knox County Board of Education in late 2025 but could not complete its application, which required organizers to affirm that the school would not be “a for-profit corporation” or “a non-public school” or another “private religious, or church school.” The aspiring charter school acknowledged that it did not check off the box because of the prohibition on religious sponsors for charter schools. In May, Atchley ruled that Wilberforce did not have to submit an application before challenging what he called an “allegedly unconstitutional barrier” to applying.

The board was left to defend the law on its own. In December 2025, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti argued that the state’s ban likely violated the Free Exercise Clause. A group of Tennessee parents and nonreligious charter school officials intervened in the case to oppose Wilberforce’s claims.

While the Tennessee General Assembly amended the law earlier this year to allow religious nonprofit organizations to sponsor charter schools, the nonsectarian requirement remained on the books. As explained on Wilberforce Academy’s website, the school will initially be open to all students in Knox County in kindergarten through third grade, and will gradually expand to eighth grade. 

Wilberforce Academy is not the first example of a religious educational institution seeking to operate as a charter school. The Oklahoma-based St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School sought to establish itself as the first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in the U.S., but the institution’s effort was blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court voted 4-4 in 2025 to uphold the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision. 

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.