Texans’ first chance to apply for school vouchers closed March 31 after a federal judge denied a request from Islamic schools and Muslim families to extend the deadline for a second time.
Four Muslim parents and three Islamic private school providers that operate four campuses had sued Texas leaders for excluding the schools over unsubstantiated terrorism allegations while accepting hundreds of other non-Islamic schools.
The lawsuit asks the court to block the voucher program from discriminating on the basis of religion. As part of the dispute, U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett on March 17 extended the voucher application deadline by two weeks and ordered the state to consider the schools’ request to join the program.
Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock — Texas’ chief financial officer who manages vouchers — recently accepted five schools cited in the lawsuit into the program (one of the schools did not sue but is attended by the children of a suing parent). Since then, the comptroller has also approved Islamic schools that did not sue.
But the schools and families who filed the lawsuit sought another deadline extension and relief for any Muslim family or Islamic school affected by the comptroller’s decision to exclude them. They added another Muslim parent to the complaint.
The next court hearing is set for April 24. Check back for updates as the lawsuit and voucher application process unfold.
Voucher program updates
- Comptroller’s office: All eligible Islamic schools approved
- Judge denies request for another deadline extension
- Muslim families, Islamic schools ask the judge to extend voucher deadline
- Texas has allowed some non-suing Islamic schools to participate
- Why Muslim families, Islamic schools sued
- How the state responded in court
- What is the voucher program?
Comptroller’s office: All eligible Islamic schools approved
The Texas comptroller’s office said Tuesday that it has approved all eligible Islamic schools that applied to participate in the voucher program.
Travis Pillow, a spokesperson for the comptroller, said the office has sent registration links to all Islamic schools that applied and that meet the state’s baseline requirements, which include being accredited and having operated for at least two years.
“As we prepare to admit students into the program and begin funding their accounts on July 1, our office is committed to investigating any failure to comply with program requirements or other applicable law by any participating school or service provider,” Pillow said in a statement.
“We will closely examine any credible report alleging fraud or unlawful activity by a participating school, vendor or education service,” he added. “At this time, no school has received funding through this program. We will ensure that no taxpayer funding flows to organizations affiliated with foreign adversaries or terrorist organizations.”
Judge denies request for another deadline extension
Bennett, the federal judge overseeing the case, on Tuesday denied Islamic schools’ and Muslim families’ request that he extend the voucher application deadline to April 14.
Bennett said the previous extension was based on “a specific and limited showing” that the Islamic schools had been excluded from the voucher registration process. The state, Bennett noted, has since approved those schools to participate in the program.
“And despite the public attention this case has received, no additional schools have sought to intervene in this action,” Bennett’s ruling said. “Accordingly, the Court will not extend emergency relief based on injuries to entities that are not parties before the Court.”
Bennett added that the ruling does not resolve claims from schools and families who alleged the state discriminated against them and that he expects both sides to have arguments prepared for the April 24 hearing.
Eric Hudson, the lead attorney in the lawsuit, said Tuesday he was disappointed by the ruling but that his team looks forward to presenting arguments about “the ongoing harm associated with the way that this program is being administered.”
Muslim families, Islamic schools ask the judge to extend voucher deadline
The families and schools requested that Bennett move the deadline from March 31 to April 14. They also asked that the court not allow the state to begin the process of determining who can receive voucher funds until the April 24 hearing.
Even though Hancock, the comptroller, has approved some Islamic schools, the attorneys argue that the late approval has deterred Muslim families from applying and has skewed the makeup of the applicant pool. When schools receive approval to join the program, lawyers said, families need time to find out and react.
The lawyers also called the state’s acceptance of some Islamic schools “late, partial, and unstable.” They cited a recent letter from Hancock to Attorney General Ken Paxton that called on the state’s top lawyer to sue Houston Quran Academy to block the school from operating in Texas. The comptroller’s office recently accepted the school, attended by one of the suing families, into the voucher program. Hancock has accused the school of having ties to terrorism, though state leaders have provided no evidence to the court substantiating that claim.
Hancock’s letter to Paxton, the lawyers argue, shows that accepting schools now does not prevent the comptroller from excluding them later.
The suing families and schools, meanwhile, want the judge to approve a request that would apply any court orders to all Muslim parents and Islamic private schools seeking access to vouchers, now or in the future.
Texas has allowed some non-suing Islamic schools to participate
After the recent court order required Hancock’s office to review the plaintiffs’ request to join the voucher program, the comptroller approved five Islamic schools cited in the lawsuit. But in recent days, the office has also quietly added some Islamic schools that did not sue.
The lawyers representing Muslim families counted at least a dozen non-suing Islamic schools approved by the comptroller since March 23, though not all of them appear in Texas’ voucher school database.
The comptroller’s office declined to comment on the additions, only noting that if a school appears in the database, it has been accepted.
Why Muslim families, Islamic schools sued
Mehdi Cherkaoui, a Muslim father of two children and lawyer representing himself, filed the first lawsuit, arguing that state leaders “systematically targeted Islamic schools for exclusion.”
The Islamic schools blocked from joining meet the voucher program’s eligibility requirements and “have no actual connection to terrorism or unlawful activity,” the lawsuit states, including Houston Qur’an Academy Spring, a private school attended by Cherkaoui’s two children.
Cherkaoui pays almost $18,000 per year in tuition for his children and wants to apply for the nearly $10,500 per child in voucher funding to offset those costs, according to the lawsuit. But with Islamic schools blocked from the program, the suit says, Cherkaoui could not complete the application.
“The exclusion is not based on individualized findings of unlawful conduct by any specific school, but rather on categorical presumptions that Islamic schools are suspect and potentially linked to terrorism by virtue of their religious identity and community associations,” the lawsuit states.
Before the voucher program’s original March 17 deadline for family applications, the lawsuit asked that the court require the state to accept all Islamic schools that meet program requirements. It also asked the judge to prohibit 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.”
A second lawsuit, filed March 11, made similar requests. The suit was filed by Bayaan Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation (Little Horizons Academy and Brighter Horizons Academy), and The Eagle Institute (Excellence Academy), which operate private schools in Galveston, Dallas and Collin counties, respectively. Three parents who joined the lawsuit — Layla Daoudi, Muna Hamadah and Farhana Querishi — have children enrolled in private schools that are part of the lawsuit.
The court combined the two lawsuits into one case. The lawyers added Zubair Ulhaq, a parent seeking vouchers for his two children, to the lawsuit.
How the state responded in court
Paxton’s office — which represents the comptroller — said the comptroller’s office has not “denied” any private schools and argued that because families who apply for vouchers do not have to select a school until July 15, they are not harmed by the exclusion of Islamic schools.
The lawyers also told the judge they did not know of any Islamic schools that had engaged in terrorism or broken state laws.
The Islamic schools suing the state are accredited by Cognia. Cognia-accredited schools require independent review, the state argued, due to the company “erroneously” listing schools as accredited without completing required steps.
Islamic schools cannot be harmed, Paxton said, until the comptroller denies their applications or does not determine their eligibility by July 15. The state also argued “it would be fundamentally unfair” to extend the application deadline and “disrupt” the educational plans of hundreds of thousands of parents.
Since those arguments, Paxton has pushed to withdraw his office’s lawyers from the case after Hancock publicly criticized their legal defense strategy and made terrorism allegations against an Islamic school without submitting evidence to the court.
“Your public letter made brand-new and incendiary claims without providing any confidence that diligent investigation supported them,” Paxton said to Hancock. “Your public letter reduces these newfound claims — that may have a material effect on your legal defenses in these cases — to a political charade that makes effective legal representation impossible.”
What is the voucher program?
Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law in 2025, authorizing the creation of a statewide program that allows families to use public funds to pay for their children’s private school or home-school education.
Between Feb. 4 and March 31, virtually any family with school-age children in Texas can apply to participate. A lottery will determine who can receive the funds, pending their acceptance to a private school. Private schools interested in joining the program can apply on a rolling basis, as long as they have existed for at least two years and received accreditation.
More than 250,000 students have applied, while more than 2,200 private schools have been accepted.
Hancock in late 2025 requested an opinion from Paxton, asking if he could exclude schools from the voucher program based on their connections to groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations or foreign adversaries.
Hancock said schools accredited by Cognia had hosted events organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group that Abbott recently designated a terrorist organization. CAIR has sued Abbott over the label, calling it defamatory and false. The U.S. State Department has not designated CAIR as a terrorist group.
Texas Republicans have made anti-Muslim rhetoric a focal point during primary election season. Hancock, appointed by the governor on an interim basis, ran to serve a full term as comptroller before losing his race.
Hancock shut hundreds of Cognia-accredited schools out of the voucher program, including those that primarily serve Muslim students, Christian students and children with disabilities, which the Houston Chronicle first reported.
Paxton released an opinion in January stating his belief that Hancock can block certain schools from participating if they are “illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries.” Before the lawsuit, no Islamic schools were known to have been accepted into the state voucher program while the state had approved other faith-based schools. Some Islamic schools had shown up on the approved list before that, but Hancock later removed them.
The comptroller’s office said it began inviting Cognia schools that it considers in compliance with the law to participate, though details of that review are unclear.
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