(RNS) — A Texan whose children attend an Islamic school in Houston sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Comptroller Kelly Hancock, alleging that schools for Muslim students are being excluded from the state’s new voucher program.
The program, introduced by the state’s Legislature in 2025, created a $1 billion fund for private school financial aid. But since Texas Education Freedom Accounts opened for applications on Feb. 4, 2026, none of the state’s accredited private Islamic schools has been listed among those eligible for reimbursement through the program.
The “blanket exclusion of a group of private schools on the basis of their religious affiliation is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution,” said Mehdi Cherkaoui, a father of two whose children are enrolled at the Houston Qu’ran Academy Spring, a private and accredited school excluded from the program. Cherkaoui, a lawyer who represents himself, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on March 1.
The suit says the state unjustly targeted these schools, which Cherkaoui noted are “not schools where kids go to memorize the Qu’ran. They learn all subjects. … It is done in an Islamic context.”
In December, after Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, a “foreign terrorist organization” and a “transnational criminal organization,” Hancock sent a letter to Paxton inquiring about the legality of excluding schools with ties to “foreign terrorist organizations” and “transnational criminal organizations.” The attorney general responded by saying his office had full authority to exclude schools from the program.
The comptroller’s letter raised concerns that a private school that had hosted a Council on American-Islamic Relations event might benefit from the voucher program. His letter, posted on X, also expressed alarm over the possible inclusion of schools with ties to the communist Chinese government.
“These circumstances appear to implicate newly enacted laws restricting property ownership, control, and financial influence by foreign adversary entities in Texas,” the letter read.
In his response to Hancock, Paxton argued the comptroller’s office had “full, exclusive statutory authority” to “prohibit schools from TEFA participation.”
“Let me be crystal clear: Texans’ tax dollars should never fund Islamic terrorists or America’s enemies,” Paxton wrote in the opinion released in late January. “There is no question that the Comptroller’s Office is statutorily charged with ensuring that our school choice program is protected from abuse by terrorists or the Chinese Communist Party.”
Neither Paxton nor Hancock returned requests for comments in time for publication.
In January, Hancock announced, again on his X account, that “no schools or organizations with ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations” would receive “Texas tax dollars” through the TEFA program. “Texas tax dollars should never be used to support terrorists or foreign adversaries,” Hancock wrote.
The dispute over the TEFA 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. Abbott has also designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist and criminal organization, which subjects the group to criminal penalties and allows the state’s attorney general to prompt legal actions to shut the group down.
RELATED: Texas governor calls CAIR a terrorist organization, says he will enforce penalties
In his complaint, Cherkaoui writes that Hancock’s decision constitutes religious discrimination and violates the First Amendment’s free exercise, establishment and equal protection clauses as well as the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. Cherkaoui is seeking “a temporary restraining order and a preliminary and permanent injunctive relief” to stop what he describes as religious discrimination before the March 17 application deadline.
The program, which grants up to $10,474 per student, would have covered the Cherkaoui family’s nearly $18,000 in tuition for their two children.
Though opposed to the voucher program for its diversion of public funds to private institutions, Texas state Rep. Salman Bhojani, a Democrat representing several Dallas suburbs, said he is surprised at the lack of Islamic schools on the program’s eligibility list. “I didn’t have the intuition, or even the feeling that they would exclude Muslim schools,” he said. “I’m an attorney. I thought, ‘How could anybody, and especially lawmakers, blatantly violate our Constitution?’”
Bhojani, the first Muslim and South Asian to serve in Texas’ House of Representatives, called it the latest example of Texas Republicans’ leaning “further conservative and further Islamophobic” as the U.S. midterm elections approach. Across the state, repeated attacks against Islam have heightened fears among Muslim Texans, he said, adding that Muslim constituents reach out to his office to report intimidation.
“They feel like they’re treated like second-class citizens,” he said. “They’re really disheartened by what’s happening.”
Recently, he joined a group of Texas Democratic lawmakers in condemning the treatment of Islamic schools under the Texas Education Freedom Account program. The group argues it threatens to make the state legally liable and imposes an unfair burden on Muslims. Bhojani said he expects other suits challenging the exclusion to be filed in the coming weeks.
“The Legislature did not create this program to be implemented through opaque, one-sided standards or shifting goalposts. … The resulting patterns risk producing a program that is exclusionary and discriminatory in effect, with Muslim schools disproportionately bearing that burden,” the Democrats’ letter read.
The document noted some schools had previously been approved and later removed without “clear, school-specific notice or articulated actual findings.” On Feb. 4, when applications opened, three Islamic schools were included out of the more than 1,500 schools approved.
The schools — Bayaan Academy, Ameen Academy and ILM Academy — have since been removed.
Original Source:
https://religionnews.com/2026/03/10/muslim-father-sues-over-exclusion-of-islamic-schools-from-texas-voucher-program/