Four Muslim parents and three private schools filed two federal lawsuits against Texas officials, seeking to block the state from excluding Islamic schools from participating in the state’s private school voucher program, according to court filings and a report distributed by The Associated Press.
The suits ask federal judges to prevent the program from discriminating on the basis of religion, plaintiffs said, arguing that Texas officials have used categorical presumptions tied to Islamic identity and community associations rather than individualized findings that a particular school is connected to terrorism or unlawful activity.
The first lawsuit was filed March 1 by a parent acting on behalf of two children who attend a Houston private school. The filing names Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, and Education Commissioner Mike Morath as defendants, according to the reporting. The plaintiffs said the affected Islamic private schools meet the voucher program’s eligibility requirements and have “no actual connection to terrorism or unlawful activity,” and they asked the court to order Texas to accept Islamic schools that qualify for the program.
A central dispute in the case centers on the comptroller’s administration of the voucher application process and a legal opinion issued by Paxton in January. In that opinion, Paxton said he believed Hancock had authority to block certain schools from participating if they are “illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries,” the reporting said. The comptroller later blocked hundreds of schools accredited through Cognia, including schools that primarily serve Muslim students, Christian students, and children with disabilities, according to the report.
The filing described a specific challenge for a Houston-area family: Mehdi Cherkaoui, a Muslim father and lawyer representing himself in the March 1 lawsuit, said he pays almost $18,000 per year in tuition for his children’s education at the Houston private school and wants to apply for nearly $10,500 per child in voucher funding. Because Islamic schools were blocked from the program, Cherkaoui said he cannot complete an application, and the suit says the exclusion is based on religion-linked presumptions rather than individualized findings of unlawful conduct by the schools themselves.
The second federal case was filed March 11 by three parents and three schools that operate in Galveston, Dallas and Collin counties. The plaintiffs named Bayaan Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation and The Eagle Institute as plaintiffs and named Hancock and Mary Katherine Stout, the education savings account program manager, as defendants, according to the report.
Texas’s voucher-style program was created after Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law in 2025. It allows families to use public funds for private school or home-school education, and between Feb. 4 and March 17 families could apply to participate, while private schools could apply on a rolling basis if they had existed for at least two years and had received accreditation. The reporting said more than 143,000 students applied and more than 2,100 private schools were accepted into the program.
The reporting also described how Texas officials reached their decisions about which accredited schools to include. Hancock’s office, the report said, had requested Paxton’s opinion on whether schools could be excluded based on connections to groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations or foreign adversaries. Hancock’s office said it began shutting out Cognia-accredited schools after identifying events tied to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group that Abbott recently designated a terrorist organization. The report said the U.S. State Department has not designated CAIR as a terrorist group, and it noted that CAIR has sued Abbott over the label.
In both lawsuits, the plaintiffs asked courts to intervene before the March 17 deadline for family applications. The March 1 filing asked the court to require Texas to accept all Islamic schools that meet program requirements and prevent the state from delaying or denying approval based on schools’ religious identity, alleged “Islamic ties,” or generalized associations with Islamic civil-rights or community organizations absent individualized, adjudicated findings of unlawful conduct. The March 11 case made similar requests, the reporting said.
The reporting said Hancock, Paxton and Morath did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It added that Morath does not oversee private schools in Texas, but that schools in the voucher program must receive accreditation from organizations recognized by his agency or the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission.