{"id":203688,"date":"2026-03-13T22:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/203688\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T22:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:37:07","slug":"islamic-schools-more-parents-sue-texas-over-exclusion-from-voucher-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/203688\/","title":{"rendered":"Islamic schools, more parents sue Texas over exclusion from voucher program"},"content":{"rendered":"

(RNS) \u2014 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<\/a> this month alleging that schools for Muslim students have been excluded from the new state voucher program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cunlawfully refusing to approve otherwise qualified Islamic schools for participation\u201d in the school funding program and that it constitutes religious discrimination.<\/p>\n

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, introduced by the state\u2019s 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\u2019s accredited private Islamic schools have been listed as eligible for reimbursement through the program.<\/p>\n

Farhana Querishi, a plaintiff whose children attend Houston Quran Academy, said in a news release that the comptroller\u2019s decision to exclude Islamic schools from the program sent a \u201ctroubling message\u201d that the state\u2019s Muslim children and communities had fewer rights than other residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo parent should have to choose between accessing a public education program and raising their child in accordance with their faith,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The dispute over the program comes amid growing hostility from Republican elected officials in Texas toward the state\u2019s Muslim residents and community leaders, which became a focal point in the state\u2019s Republican primaries.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts website. (Screen grab)<\/p>\n

Last week, Mehdi Cherkaoui, a lawyer and Muslim father whose children\u2019s school is excluded from TEFA, also filed a lawsuit against Paxton and Hancock alleging religious discrimination.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: Muslim father sues over exclusion of Islamic schools from Texas voucher program<\/a><\/p>\n

Though Hancock hasn\u2019t commented publicly on the Islamic schools\u2019 exclusion from the program, their absence and past comments he made expressing intentions to exclude them \u201csupports an inference that the School Plaintiffs have been excluded because of their Islamic religious identity,\u201d according to the plaintiffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Defendants\u2019 silence is formally unexplained, the current posture suggests alignment with recent rhetoric linking all Islamic organizations to \u2018terrorism,\u2019\u201d the complaint reads.<\/p>\n

In December, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a major Muslim civil rights group, a \u201cforeign terrorist organization\u201d and a \u201ctransnational criminal organization,\u201d Hancock sent a letter to Paxton, posted on X<\/a>, inquiring about the legality of excluding schools with ties to \u201cforeign terrorist organizations\u201d and \u201ctransnational criminal organizations.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The attorney general responded that Hancock\u2019s office had \u201cfull, exclusive statutory authority\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

In reaction to a Washington Post story published Wednesday about the schools\u2019 exclusion, Abbott commented<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s right. We don\u2019t want school choice funds going to radical Islamic indoctrination with historic connections to terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Paxton nor Hancock returned RNS\u2019 requests for comments.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit argues the comptroller\u2019s decision to bar such schools from applying violates the First Amendment\u2019s free exercise and establishment clauses and the 14th Amendment\u2019s equal protection and due process clauses. Plaintiffs are seeking a ruling halting the exclusion of the schools before the program\u2019s deadline next Tuesday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: Texas governor calls CAIR a terrorist organization, says he will enforce penalties<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s, the complaints note. After the deadline, the parents who failed to register won\u2019t be considered in TEFA\u2019s lottery, which determines who benefits from the funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey 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,\u201d the complaint reads.<\/p>\n

The three school plaintiffs, Bayaan Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation and the Eagle Institute Excellence Academy, have not received explanation from the comptroller\u2019s office regarding their exclusion, they said in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In his lawsuit filed on March 1, Cherkaoui, whose children are enrolled at the Houston Quran Academy, also argued the comptroller\u2019s decision violates the First Amendment\u2019s free exercise, establishment and equal protection clauses as well as the 14th Amendment\u2019s due process clause. His lawsuit also seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent religious discrimination before the March 17 deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(RNS) \u2014 Three Texas Islamic schools and a group of parents are suing state Attorney General Ken Paxton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30486,392,38596,5621,1967,76635,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-203688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-cair","tag-greg-abbott","tag-islamophobia","tag-kelly-hancock","tag-ken-paxton","tag-muslim-americans","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}