In late April, the Jackson–Madison County School System Board in Tennessee approved a charter for Union Academy, a “faith-based Christian college preparatory” institution. The decision will likely give the Supreme Court another chance to rule on the constitutionality of religious charter schools, currently prohibited nationwide. An earlier challenge to Oklahoma’s ban on religious charters made it to the Court, which split 4–4 on the issue after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself because of a possible conflict of interest. This left the Oklahoma law standing. The federal constitutional issues, as explained by Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro, remain ripe for review.
No legal challenge to the opening of Union Academy has yet to be filed, though some national or state-level advocacy group will likely step in. This is a line-in-the-sand issue for many charter school advocates and those opposed to the use of public money to support religious instruction.
Finally, a reason to check your email.
Sign up for our free newsletter today.
The Union Academy story has some unique features. First, the charter was not proposed by an interest group or private actor. Rather, the superintendent of the Jackson–Madison County School District, Marlon King, solicited the proposal from Union University, a private Christian College in Jackson, Tennessee, and the county’s democratically elected county school board approved it. Tennessee’s Charter School Law allows local boards to approve “a waiver of any state board rule or statute that inhibits or hinders the charter school’s ability to meets its goals or comply with its mission statement.” The approved charter application cites numerous instances of state law and regulations prohibiting the exercise of religion in publicly supported schools and the rationale for waiving those prohibitions.
What, exactly, is the school proposing to do, and why did the superintendent and school board solicit and approve this proposal? The school is unambiguously Christian. Religious values and materials are not an add-on to its program—they are at the core of it. Its application declares:
Union Academy will be a Christ-centered, academically rigorous public charter school designed to serve families in Jackson, Tennessee and the surrounding communities who are seeking a high quality, tuition-free education grounded in Christian values. The school’s mission is to provide Christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to Church and society.
Union Academy will deliver a strong academic program to K-12 students with an emphasis on literacy, mathematics, science, critical thinking, and great texts of the Western tradition interconnected with Biblical worldview.
The school’s program is academically rigorous. Its application commits the school to compliance with high academic standards, ongoing assessment of student progress, and curricula such as language arts, Singapore math, and a high school program including Algebra I & II, geometry, pre-calculus, biology, chemistry, and physics. Its high school approach is committed to developing “students’ research, writing, and critical thinking skills while ensuring alignment with Tennessee Academic Standards, End-of-Course exams, ACT assessments, and college readiness expectations.”
The charter application points to the relatively low performance of students in local public schools compared with Tennessee as a whole, with the county lagging the state by 12 percentage points in reading and 13 points in math. In 2025, only 35 percent of the county’s students scored at or approaching expectations in ELA, and 18 percent did so in math.
The plan is for Union Academy to open in August 2027, with 320 students in grades kindergarten through five. It will grow by one grade and 60 students per year, eventually serving 780 students in grades K-12 by 2034.
Some will oppose Union Academy and similar schools because they believe, erroneously, that nonreligious public education is fundamental to the American experiment. Our Founders would be surprised to hear that, since there were no public schools in the early American republic, and religious institutions provided much of the social services, a role overtaken by the public sector in the twentieth century. Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that voluntary associations were central to American democracy, filling civic space through seminaries, churches, hospitals, prisons, and schools. The U.S. Constitution enshrined a ban on both congressional establishment of a national religion as well as government interference with an individual’s right to exercise his religious beliefs. For some families, religious schooling is integral to education. Whether such instruction occurs at Union Academy or some other religious charter school, the Supreme Court will eventually have to consider the constitutionality of state bans on religious charter schools.