The Diocese of Charlotte has entered a high-profile legal dispute over a private school’s expulsion of pupils whose parents challenged its curriculum.
The case — Turpin v Charlotte Latin School — dates to September 2021, when Doug and Nicole Turpin’s children, Olive and Luke, were told to leave Charlotte Latin, an independent secular K–12 in North Carolina. The Turpins say the expulsion came days after they questioned the school’s “harmful ideological agenda” at a board presentation.
Doug Turpin later wrote in the North State Journal on 19 April 2023 that a “new ‘foundational’ position” announced in 2020 meant “DEI would be the lens through which every aspect of the school’s culture and curriculum will be managed.” He claimed this brought “alarming virtue-signalling” and “woke class assignments” — including sexually explicit books in the library and a teacher telling pupils that “Republicans are white supremacists who are trying to create Jim Crow 2.0.”
