A federal judge has ruled that Tennessee's ban on religiously affiliated charter schools is unconstitutional, in a decision that could open the door to faith-based charter schools across the state.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville issued the ruling on Friday, siding with Wilberforce Academy in its legal challenge against the Knox County Board of Education. Judge Charles Atchley, who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump, barred the board from enforcing the state's nonsectarian requirement for charter schools, according to The Christian Post.

What the judge decided

Atchley concluded that "Tennessee's Nonsectarian Requirement for its otherwise generally available charter school program violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment." He wrote that the First Amendment does not permit Tennessee to open its charter school programme to private participants and then exclude them because they seek to exercise their religion.

The judge also noted that Tennessee did not have to create a charter school programme at all, and retains broad authority to structure its public education system. But once the state made the option generally available, he said, it could not condition participation on giving up a constitutionally protected right. He declined, however, to order the school board to pay nominal damages to Wilberforce Academy.

How the case arose

Wilberforce Academy, a Christian nonprofit, wants to open a Christian charter school in Knox County, initially for children in kindergarten through third grade and gradually expanding to eighth grade. It challenged provisions of the Tennessee Public Charter Schools Act of 2002 that bar religious nonprofit organisations from sponsoring charter schools and require charter schools to operate as public, nonsectarian and nonreligious schools.

The academy submitted a letter of intent to the Knox County Board of Education in late 2025 but could not complete its application, which required organisers to affirm that the school would not be a private religious or church school. 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 school board was left to defend the law largely on its own. In December 2025, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti argued that the 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.

What happens next

The ruling does not automatically create a new school. Letters of intent from organisations seeking to open a charter school in the 2026-27 school year are due on 3 December, and full applications are due on 1 February, according to Knox News. Wilberforce has not yet said whether it will file.

Knox County Schools and the county law department are reviewing the opinion before deciding on next steps. The nonprofits that joined the case on the board's side, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center, said they disagreed with the ruling and were evaluating their options, including an appeal.

If the decision stands, it would apply to charter schools of any faith, not only Christian ones. That is the point the board's supporters have stressed: once the door opens to religious charter schools, it opens equally to schools of every faith, and to none. There are 116 active charter schools in Tennessee, and Emerald Academy is the only one currently operating in Knox County.

A wider national fight

The Tennessee case is part of a wider national dispute over taxpayer-funded religious schools. The judge's decision relied heavily on the US Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in Carson v. Makin, which said Maine could not bar parents from using state tuition assistance at religious schools, and its 2021 decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia.

In Oklahoma, the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School sought to become the first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in the United States, but the Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked the effort, and the US Supreme Court split 4-4 in 2025, leaving that decision in place. In Tennessee itself, the Jackson-Madison County school system approved a request earlier this year from Union Academy, a faith-based Christian college preparatory institution, to operate as a charter school from the 2027-28 school year. The Knoxville ruling now gives that trend a federal court ruling behind it, unless an appeal overturns it.