Texas sued for excluding Islamic schools from tuition voucher scheme

HOUSTON (CN) — A Houston-area parent has sued Texas officials over the state’s refusal to let him use a tuition voucher program for a local Islamic private school.

The plaintiff in Sunday’s federal lawsuit is Mehdi Cherkaoui, a local attorney and the father of two children attending the Houston Qur’An Academy Spring, an Islamic private school north of Houston.

Mr. Cherkaoui, who is representing himself through his law firm, claims the state is using a coordinated policy of excluding Islamic schools from the state’s new tuition voucher program.

“As a direct result of this coordinated policy, not a single accredited Islamic private school has been approved to participate in TEFA — despite the approval of hundreds of other private schools statewide, including numerous Christian schools — effectively barring Muslim families like plaintiff’s from accessing over $20,000 per year in publicly funded educational benefits solely because of their religious faith and school choice," Cherkaoui says in the complaint.

Cherkaoui points to a request made by Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock in December 2025, and the subsequent legal opinion Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued in January 2026, as the basis of that coordinated policy of excluding Islamic schools.

Hancock asked Paxton’s office, “May the Comptroller’s Office determine, under the ‘other relevant law’ provision in Senate Bill 2, that a private school is ineligible to participate in TEFA if it has ties to entities designated under Texas law as foreign terrorist organizations, transnational criminal organizations, or foreign adversaries?”

The legal justification for the anti-terrorism exclusion comes from Governor Greg Abbott’s move in November 2025 to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights advocacy group commonly known as CAIR, as a foreign terrorist organization over supposed ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Chinese government.

CAIR immediately challenged the governor’s designation in a federal defamation lawsuit. But that did not stop Hancock’s office from using claims that Islamic private schools in the state had hosted events sponsored or organized by CAIR as the justification for his request to the attorney general.

Paxton’s affirmative response in his January legal opinion said that existing state and federal law would allow the Comptroller to make those exclusions. And in his own press release alongside the response, Paxton said, “Let me be crystal clear: Texans’ tax dollars should never  fund Islamic terrorists or America’s enemies.”

Mr. Cherkaoui also argues in his lawsuit Sunday that the state’s exclusion of Islamic private schools like his children’s school in Spring violates four constitutional rights: free exercise of religion, state establishment of religion, equal protection and due process.

By blocking Muslim parents from using the voucher for Islamic schools, Cherkaoui says the state has infringed their right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. And by excluding the Islamic schools from the voucher program while allowing schools of other religions in, the state has violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Cherkaoui also says these exclusions are religious discrimination in violation of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

As for the due process violation, Cherkaoui says the phrasse “other relevant law” term in the voucher law, the provision which Hancock and Paxton relied on to exclude Islamic schools, is unconstitutionally void because it is so vague that it can be used for this kind of arbitrary exclusion.

“Defendants cannot demonstrate a compelling interest in categorically excluding all Islamic schools from a generally available educational benefit program, and their blanket exclusion based on religious identity is not narrowly tailored to any legitimate interest,” Cherkaoui says.

The suit comes ahead of a March 17 deadline to apply for vouchers for the 2026-27 school year. If these schools are not placed back on the TEFA approved list by then, Cherkaoui and other parents will have to pay tens of thousands of dollars more in tuition to send their kids to those schools for another year.

Cherkaoui wants a federal judge to declare the effective ban on vouchers for Islamic schools unconstitutional and to block officials from carrying out that interpretation of the law. He also seeks nominal damages.