LifeWise Academy sued Zachary Parrish, the co-founder of Parents Against LifeWise, for copyright infringement

Jul 06, 2024

One of the largest Christian organizations offering Bible classes to public school students is suing a man who posted their entire curriculum online in an effort to warn parents to reject the program. And the Christian organization will almost certainly win this legal battle.

Let’s back up for a second, though, because how are they allowed to offer Bible classes to public school students?!
How “released time” works… and how it fails kids

It’s part of a practice known as “released time.” Over the past few years, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of public school districts giving students permission to use “released time,” effectively giving them the green light to ditch their classes to go learn more about the Bible.

Technically, the law is religiously neutral. Any organization is allowed to offer religious classes, or explicitly non-religious classes, to students. Parents have to opt in to letting their kids participate, and no school funds are used for any of this. For example, if students are transported to a local church for these lessons, the church has to pay for the buses. Students also have to make up any missed assignments and they can’t skip certain core classes (like English or Math).

That’s why this is all legal. But in practice, this is a Christian Nationalist dream come true. That’s because it’s usually evangelical/Catholic churches that have the resources to offer these courses and pay for the costs associated with them.

Then there are the practical problems.

Students who skip class for these church lessons—especially if they leave the same class each time—will likely be academically behind their peers, even if they’re skipping an elective. It also makes life harder for teachers who may have to catch students up on lessons they may have missed so that they can make sense of what’s happening when they’re actually in the classroom—it’s the same reason a field trip for one subject can have ripple effects on so many other teachers. And while students can’t skip certain required classes, they are able to skip art, music, or gym… which implies that those subjects (and those teachers) aren’t as important for their development.

Plus, churches already have all kinds of ways to indoctrinate children. Do they really need to interrupt the school day to do it?

Then there’s the peer pressure. If your friends are taking this Bible course, and getting prizes and candy while they’re there, you’re going to want to go to, too. That’s not illegal, but it’s another strain on families who are religious minorities. It’s not hard to imagine a public school where, at some point in the day, only Muslim or Jewish students are sitting in class because their Christian peers have gone off to church.

So you can understand why Christian Nationalists have seized on the opportunity to remind school districts they can take advantage of these programs—Tennessee and Oklahoma have both passed laws promoting released time in the past few years. (In Oklahoma, where The Satanic Temple has pledged to offer their own courses as part of their “Hellion Academy of Independent Learning (HAIL),” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has already insisted, “There will be no Satanists in Oklahoma schools.&rdquo
LifeWise Academy is the biggest name in the “released time” world

But the biggest impact has really been seen in Ohio because of a Christian ministry called LifeWise Academy. They’ve become the alpha dog in the “released time” world, offering their courses across the state and beyond. They take care of the curriculum, staff, and background checks; local chapters (usually churches) can tap into the network for use in their own local public school districts. NBC News reported in April that the group now has chapters in “more than 300 schools in a dozen states, teaching 35,000 public school students.” An article from this past week said it was 525 schools in 23 states.

(Follow above article link to view original article with photos/PDFs.)

And while church/state separation is supposed to be maintained, that’s not what actually happens:

Opponents have also documented several instances of teachers and administrators promoting LifeWise to students, either by allowing LifeWise volunteers to visit classrooms, hosting schoolwide assemblies or advertising the program in paperwork sent home to parents — actions that, according to some legal experts, could violate the First Amendment.

So there are all kinds of concerns about LifeWife, ethically and legally.
LifeWise is suing a man who wants to sound the alarm on them

That’s why Zachary Parrish sprang into action. With his colleague Molly Gaines, they began a Facebook group and website called Parents Against LifeWise last year hoping to sound the alarm on the program. They highlight many of the concerns I raised earlier while also pointing out how the group’s background checks are extremely basic, how their “teachers” many not have any real credentials, and how the goal of the program is to convert kids and not just educate them about Christianity. (Parrish and Gaines spoke in more depth about all this during a recent interview with Glass City Humanist.)

They correctly say public schools wouldn’t allow any of this, then ask why LifeWise is allowed to get away with it. But the whole point of “released time” is that it creates a legal separation between public schools and private religious organizations. So rather than being an exposé, their website is really more of a list of things parents should know before signing any permission slips for their kids.

If that’s where things ended, there would be no problem. It would be fair criticism of a bad program.

But Parrish went much further than merely warning parents about the obvious problems with LifeWise.

According to a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the Northern District of Indiana, Parrish “posed as a LifeWise volunteer to gain access to internal LifeWise documents.” He somehow got access to their full curriculum—including PDFs and videos—which he then posted in their entirety on his website.

LifeWise asked him to take it down. He said no.

They sent him a cease and desist letter. He responded by… um… well, look:

I’ll offer the standard IANAL disclaimer, but LifeWise will almost certainly win this lawsuit because posting their curriculum online is not, in fact, “fair use bitch.”

“Fair use” would be showing snippets/screenshots of the curriculum for the purpose of critiquing it. But just like book reviewers can legally quote passages from authors but not share free PDFs of their books, and just like YouTubers can air a few seconds of a movie in order to talk about it but not share the full movie online, Parrish can analyze the LifeWise curriculum all he wants but he cannot publicly share the entire curriculum with strangers. It’s their copyrighted creation. They are allowed to go to court to protect it. (Saying everything is being shared for “fair use purposes,” like Parrish’s website does, doesn’t mean it’s fair use.)

LifeWise also says in the lawsuit that they have additional legal obligations here. Their curriculum is based on the Gospel Project (run by the Southern Baptist Convention) and they have to pay the SBC a licensing fee based on the number of students in their classes. That agreement says they cannot distribute the material publicly. It’s not like their supporters can get it for free either; LifeWise Academy chapter programs have to “pay a fee” to access the content.

All of that’s to say: Parrish screwed up. Instead of just posting select examples of malfeasance or misinformation or religious hypocrisy, he uploaded the entire curriculum and internal documents to his website so anyone could download them… while other parts of the website pointed out some of the problems.

It was only after LifeWise asked the parent company of Wordpress (where Parrish’s site is hosted) to remove the material that it finally came down.

What about the claim that Parrish simply wanted the public to know what LifeWise was teaching kids? LifeWise said they are fully transparent about that already:

Mr. Parrish claims that his actions are justified because he is educating parents about the LifeWise Curriculum. However, LifeWise provides a comprehensive 27-page summary of the LifeWise Curriculum on [its] website to anyone who provides their name, email address, and zip code.

In short, there are all kinds of legitimate complaints people can have against LifeWise. Parrish went much further than just making those complaints in a way that now puts him in legal jeopardy.
Parrish rejects some of the claims in the lawsuit

While Parrish hasn’t officially responded to the lawsuit yet, a GoFundMe page has been set up to help him cover his legal expenses. (He’s raised $2,300 as of this writing.) He does not have a lawyer yet.

In response to questions I sent him, though, Parrish was adamant he did nothing wrong. He also said he would keep at it until a judge forced him to stop:

If I'm wrong and if the courts decide I violated the law, I will accept that. My general position however, is that parents and educators have a right to know what curriculum is being taught to their children.

He also didn’t agree with the argument made by LifeWise that he “used unauthorized means to obtain the password-protected LifeWise Curriculum only accessible by paid employees of LifeWise who have been issued login credentials.”

He said he was able to get access to the material using his “regular old gmail account.” As for the password, it was a universal one that LifeWise had publicized in their own materials. (I personally saw a LifeWise video on YouTube in which the narrator said it out loud.) They may have restricted access since that time, Parrish said, but it’s not like he had to be some kind of master hacker to get into their system.

What about the copyright issue? Parrish maintained that “fair use” was a valid defense and he had no intention of backing down without a court order.

In my opinion, it’s just a matter of time before that court order comes his way.

That doesn’t mean he needs to stop criticizing or publicizing what LifeWise does, though. The organization gives people plenty of fodder and the biggest thing LifeWise has going for it is that many parents have no clue what the group does. All the more reason to show the world what they’re doing, why it’s problematic, and why decent parents should avoid it at all costs. But you don’t need to publish the full curriculum to make that case.