Texas excluded Islamic schools from voucher program, lawsuit says
Texas excluded Islamic schools from voucher program, lawsuit says
BrieAnna J. Frank, USA TODAYSat, April 11, 2026 at 10:02 AM UTC
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Efforts by state officials in Texas and Florida are raising questions − and triggering lawsuits − over whether their taxpayer-funded school voucher programs discriminate against Islamic schools in violation of the First Amendment.
Both Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, as a foreign terrorist organization. CAIR has long rejected such characterizations, and it is not on the federal government’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Nevertheless, Abbott’s administration has used the designation to justify excluding, at least temporarily, certain Islamic private schools from its voucher program on the basis of their alleged affiliation with CAIR. DeSantis signed legislation barring private schools deemed to be affiliated with or influenced by a foreign terrorist organization into law on April 6.
Experts and CAIR representatives said the Abbott and DeSantis administrations have the burden of proving their allegations in court. If they can't provide evidence supporting their claims that certain Islamic schools are tied to terrorism, they said the efforts could amount to illegal religious discrimination.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR's national deputy director, condemned what he described as Abbott and DeSantis' “political stunts” in an interview with USA TODAY.
“There is no Texas exception of the First Amendment,” he said.
The debate over school vouchers and religious freedom comes at a time when states, particularly in the conservative South and Midwest, are pushing for a more open display of religion in government and public life − from the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools to efforts to establish the nation's first religious charter school.
Charter schools are similar to public schools in being publicly funded and tuition-free, but they are independently operated under agreements with the government. By contrast, voucher programs like those in Texas and Florida help families pay tuition at private schools, many of which have religious ties.
Travis Pillow, a program spokesman for Texas Education Freedom Accounts, said the state's Comptroller’s Office “has to investigate whether applicant schools are arms of terrorist organizations.”
“This is not a religious question,” he said. “It is a question of whether an applicant is violating relevant law.”
He went on to say the “vetting process does not involve religion,” though he did not provide further details on what it does entail, and that the office “does not have information on how many Islamic schools have been admitted to the program.”
An aerial view of the Capitol in Austin on Jan. 6, 2022.Texas, Florida take similar actions against CAIR
Abbott declared both the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations in late 2025. The designation “authorizes heightened enforcement against both organizations and their affiliates and prohibits them from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas,” his office said.
DeSantis signed an executive order along similar lines in December, directing state agencies to “prevent unlawful activities by these organizations, including denying privileges or resources to anyone providing material support.”
CAIR Foundation and CAIR’s Florida chapter sued DeSantis days later. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in March blocked DeSantis’ order from being implemented while litigation continues, writing that the First Amendment "bars the Governor from continuing the troubling trend of using an executive office to make a political statement at the expense of others’ constitutional rights.”
CAIR has described efforts to connect it to the Muslim Brotherhood as “pure McCarthyism” and noted that it has not been charged with any crimes.
President Donald Trump's administration designated three specific branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations in January. Although similar declarations have been made in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the United Nations and European Union have not added the sprawling global group to terror lists.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued both organizations, along with CAIR’s chapters in Austin, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, in February. He sought to bar them from operating in the state and to “stop their violent ideology from spreading” across Texas.
In a letter to Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock later that month, the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus said it had not supported the state voucher program since its proposal "due to fundamental concerns about its negative impact on public schools and transparency."
"Since the program exists, however, it must be implemented consistently with constitutional and statutory guarantees of equal protection and treatment," the letter said.
USA TODAY reached out to DeSantis, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath and Paxton's respective offices for comment.
A 'classic First Amendment case'
Mehdi Cherkaoui, the father of two children who attend an accredited K-12 Islamic school near Houston, sued Paxton, Hancock and Morath in part on First Amendment grounds on March 1.
His complaint alleged that the state’s actions had left him with a financial burden of more than $20,000 per year by denying the vouchers to both of his children. The school choice program offers $10,474 per private school student for the 2026-2027 academic year. It also accused the state of causing “dignitary harm” through the “official stigmatization” of Islam and “spiritual harm” by burdening the exercise of their religious beliefs.
Christian and Jewish private schools were accepted into the program, according to the lawsuit, "thereby denying Muslim families access to benefits available to similarly situated non-Muslim families."
A group of both parents and Islamic schools filed a similar complaint on March 11, and the cases were consolidated later in the month.
Abbott acknowledged the exclusion of Islamic schools from the voucher program in a March 12 X post.
“We don’t want school choice funds going to radical Islamic indoctrination with historic connections to terrorism,” he said.
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The lawsuit requested the court order the state to accept all eligible Islamic schools into the program. Some Islamic schools have since been accepted, according to the Texas Tribune.
But the lawsuit, which Mitchell described as a "classic First Amendment case," is still ongoing. A hearing is scheduled for April 24.
He said CAIR would be open to pursuing legal action if similar efforts arise in other states but that for the meantime, it is monitoring developments in the lawsuit backed by parents and schools.
USA TODAY reached out to plaintiffs for comment.
'Chilling effect' in Texas, around nation
The efforts have created a “hostile environment” for Islamic schools throughout the state, Shaimaa Zayan, operations manager at CAIR’s Austin chapter, said.
Some have been pushed into "self-silence" out of fear that getting involved in the legal fight would jeopardize their students' safety, she said.
That echoes the "clear chilling effect" that has been seen in the nation more broadly under Trump's administration, according to Mary-Rose Papandrea, a First Amendment professor at George Washington University.
Numerous universities, she noted, have opted to settle with the federal government rather than continue lengthy and costly legal battles.
“We have a lot of rights that often go unvindicated in this country because of how burdensome" litigation is, Steven Collis, law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told USA TODAY.
Inclusion of Islamic schools, national security claims could benefit state
The issue of taxpayer dollars supporting private religious schools has “been a mess” for the better part of a century, Collis said.
The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment's Establishment Clause — which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another — applied to state governments in the 1940s, but he said the law “has never really been settled” as it relates to public funds subsidizing private religious education.
Texas could use the fact that some Islamic schools were ultimately accepted to support arguments that the program does not discriminate among religions, though he said that does not guarantee it will prevail in the lawsuit.
Invoking concerns of national security or terrorism is a “tried and true” method for the government to take actions that would otherwise violate the First Amendment, Papandrea said.
The Department of Justice, for example, has made such claims in defense of the FBI’s unprecedented search of a Washington Post reporter’s home in January as part of a national security leak investigation.
Mitchell said state governments should "put up or shut up" as it relates to claims that Islamic schools are associated with terrorism. Charges should be pressed if officials have genuine, evidence-based reasons to believe such ties exist, he said. Otherwise, he said simply making a declaration and denying certain public benefits as a result is a violation of due process rights, which require the government to follow an established and fair legal procedure before depriving someone of their "life, liberty or property."
In his view, though, the efforts related to school vouchers in Texas and Florida are part of broader actions that he said target Muslims. He added that other groups, including the Black, Jewish and Latino communities, have similarly faced “state-sanctioned bigotry” in fighting for "their right to be fully American.”
Broader efforts related to religion, public life around nation
The issue of Texas and Florida's school voucher programs is part of a “much bigger, broader, longer” campaign related to religion and public life that long predates Trump's current administration, Papandrea said.
The nation has seen the result of such efforts in recent years.
In 2019, a USA TODAY investigation documented at least 10,000 bills almost entirely from model legislation written by special interest groups — not lawmakers — that were introduced nationwide over eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into state law. The copycat proposals included efforts to ban Islamic religious law, also known as Sharia law, from American courts, as well as other bills that sought to thwart Islamic institutions that some, without clear evidence, claimed were tied to terrorism.
States including Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, have passed laws requiring public schools to display the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments in classrooms.
They've had varying degrees of success in lawsuits.
An array of Arkansas school districts were blocked in March from implementing the displays following a judge’s finding that the law “serves no educational purpose” and violates plaintiffs’ rights. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on the other hand, allowed Louisiana to implement its law on the basis that there was not yet enough information about the displays – such as their content and prominence in classrooms – to preemptively deem them unconstitutional.
In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked in a case that could have established the nation’s first religious charter school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court had previously ruled that allowing St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School to be established would violate the First Amendment, which bars the government from establishing an official religion.
Ultimately, Papandrea said, “The march is on to break down the wall between church and state."
BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@usatoday.com.
USA TODAY's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lawsuits allege school vouchers discriminated against Islamic schools
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