(RNS) — Three Texas Islamic schools and a group of parents are suing state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Comptroller Kelly Hancock, marking the second legal challenge this month alleging that schools for Muslim students have been excluded from the new state voucher program.
The second lawsuit, filed on Wednesday (March 11) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, says state officials and the voucher program director, Mary Katherine Stout, have been “unlawfully refusing to approve otherwise qualified Islamic schools for participation” in the school funding program and that it constitutes religious discrimination.
The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, introduced by the state’s Legislature in 2025, created a $1 billion fund for private school financial aid. An online platform for parents to start applying opened on Feb. 4 (open through March 17), but none of the state’s accredited private Islamic schools have been listed as eligible for reimbursement through the program.
Farhana Querishi, a plaintiff whose children attend Houston Quran Academy, said in a news release that the comptroller’s decision to exclude Islamic schools from the program sent a “troubling message” that the state’s Muslim children and communities had fewer rights than other residents.
“No parent should have to choose between accessing a public education program and raising their child in accordance with their faith,” she said.
The dispute over the program comes amid growing hostility from Republican elected officials in Texas toward the state’s Muslim residents and community leaders, which became a focal point in the state’s Republican primaries.
The Texas Education Freedom Accounts website. (Screen grab)
Last week, Mehdi Cherkaoui, a lawyer and Muslim father whose children’s school is excluded from TEFA, also filed a lawsuit against Paxton and Hancock alleging religious discrimination.
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Though Hancock hasn’t commented publicly on the Islamic schools’ exclusion from the program, their absence and past comments he made expressing intentions to exclude them “supports an inference that the School Plaintiffs have been excluded because of their Islamic religious identity,” according to the plaintiffs.
“While Defendants’ silence is formally unexplained, the current posture suggests alignment with recent rhetoric linking all Islamic organizations to ‘terrorism,’” the complaint reads.
In December, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a major Muslim civil rights group, a “foreign terrorist organization” and a “transnational criminal organization,” Hancock sent a letter to Paxton, posted on X, inquiring about the legality of excluding schools with ties to “foreign terrorist organizations” and “transnational criminal organizations.” The comptroller raised concerns that a private school that had hosted a CAIR event might benefit from the voucher program. He also expressed alarm over the possible inclusion of schools with ties to the communist Chinese government.
The attorney general responded that Hancock’s office had “full, exclusive statutory authority” to prohibit schools from participation in the school voucher program. And both made comments on social media about wanting to ensure the program would not fund schools with ties to Islamic terrorist organizations.
In reaction to a Washington Post story published Wednesday about the schools’ exclusion, Abbott commented, “That’s right. We don’t want school choice funds going to radical Islamic indoctrination with historic connections to terrorism.”
Neither Paxton nor Hancock returned RNS’ requests for comments.
The lawsuit argues the comptroller’s decision to bar such schools from applying violates the First Amendment’s free exercise and establishment clauses and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses. Plaintiffs are seeking a ruling halting the exclusion of the schools before the program’s deadline next Tuesday.
RELATED: Texas governor calls CAIR a terrorist organization, says he will enforce penalties
Some parents whose children are enrolled in Islamic schools have entered the program by selecting other schools, while others have refrained from registering, refusing to select a school other than their children’s, the complaints note. After the deadline, the parents who failed to register won’t be considered in TEFA’s lottery, which determines who benefits from the funding.
“They have created a system where Muslim families cannot even select their schools in the application portal, while thousands of non-Islamic private schools remain approved and eligible,” the complaint reads.
The three school plaintiffs, Bayaan Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation and the Eagle Institute Excellence Academy, have not received explanation from the comptroller’s office regarding their exclusion, they said in the lawsuit.
The children of plaintiffs Layla Daoudi, Muna Hamadah and Farhana Querishi are enrolled, respectively, at the Houston Quran Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation and the Eagle Institute Excellence Academy.
Bayaan Academy, a 1,200-student virtual school headquartered in Galveston County, was initially approved for the program after filling out a Google form put out by the comptroller’s office in December. However, it was removed from the list of eligible schools following a news report highlighting that it was one of the few Islamic schools included, according to the suit.
In his lawsuit filed on March 1, Cherkaoui, whose children are enrolled at the Houston Quran Academy, also argued the comptroller’s decision violates the First Amendment’s free exercise, establishment and equal protection clauses as well as the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. His lawsuit also seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent religious discrimination before the March 17 deadline.
