Federal judge forces Texas to fund Islamic private schools through taxpayer voucher program

At least four Islamic private schools in Texas have been approved to receive taxpayer-funded vouchers after a federal judge ordered the state to stop excluding them from its Education Freedom Accounts program. Three of those schools were admitted just this week.

The billion-dollar program provides up to $10,400 per child for private school tuition, up to $30,000 for children with disabilities, and around $2,000 for homeschooling families. The judge also extended the application deadline to March 31, giving additional Islamic schools time to apply.

Among the newly approved institutions: Bayaan Academy, Brighter Horizons Academy, Excellence Academy, and Houston Quran Academy.

How we got here

When Texas launched the Education Freedom Accounts program, Islamic schools were not among those approved, even though they appeared to meet the same accreditation and eligibility requirements as other private institutions in the program. Muslim parents and school leaders sued the state, arguing that the exclusion was unconstitutional religious discrimination. A federal judge agreed and ordered the state to open the doors, as Daily Mail reports.

Maria Kari, the attorney representing the families, framed it as a straightforward case:

"There was never an issue with these Islamic schools' accreditation or issues with Cognia's accreditation."

She went further:

"This was simply the state excluding Islamic schools from a government-funded program, which is unconstitutional."

Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock's office confirmed the three new admissions this week and said his office is reviewing the funding sources of Islamic schools that applied.

The real problem isn't the ruling

Here's where conservatives need to think clearly rather than reactively. The outrage over Islamic schools receiving vouchers is understandable on a gut level, particularly in a state where Governor Greg Abbott designated the Council on American Islamic Relations a terrorist organization just months ago, in November 2025. The instinct to keep taxpayer dollars away from institutions that might have ideological problems is sound.

But that instinct collides with a legal reality that school choice advocates should have anticipated from the start. Once you create a government-funded voucher program and open it to private religious schools, you cannot then pick and choose which religions qualify. The First Amendment does not work à la carte. A program that funds Christian private schools and Jewish day schools but excludes Islamic academies with identical accreditation is not going to survive a federal courtroom. It didn't.

This is not a defeat for conservatism. It is a consequence of how the program was structured, and it was an entirely predictable one.

The deeper question for school choice

School choice has long been a crown jewel of conservative education policy, and rightly so. Parents should have the power to remove their children from failing public schools and direct education dollars toward institutions that reflect their values. The principle is sound. But the execution matters enormously.

When the state becomes the funding mechanism, the state's constitutional obligations come along for the ride. That includes religious neutrality. You do not get to build a program on the premise that parents should choose, then restrict which choices are available based on which faith tradition a school follows. Either the program is open to all accredited institutions that meet the eligibility criteria, or it isn't a choice program at all. It's a subsidy for preferred religions, and courts will treat it accordingly.

The Comptroller's office reviewing the funding sources of Islamic school applicants is a reasonable step. Vetting institutions for financial transparency, curriculum standards, and organizational ties is exactly what the state should be doing for every school in the program, regardless of denomination. If a school has problematic affiliations or fails to meet legitimate, neutrally applied criteria, the state has every right to deny participation. What it cannot do is apply a religious litmus test.

What comes next

With the March 31 deadline extended, more Islamic schools are likely to apply. The political optics in Texas will be uncomfortable. Abbott's CAIR designation signals a posture of suspicion toward certain Islamic organizations, and that posture has broad support among Texas conservatives. But designating an advocacy organization is a different legal action than blanket exclusion of religious schools from a neutral benefit program. The two can coexist, but only if the state draws its lines with precision rather than a broad brush.

The smarter play for Texas going forward is rigorous, religion-neutral vetting criteria applied uniformly. Accreditation standards. Financial audits. Curriculum review. Organizational transparency. Apply those standards to every applicant, and the schools that shouldn't be in the program won't survive the process. The ones that do will have earned their place on the same terms as everyone else.

Conservatives built school choice on the principle that parents, not bureaucrats, should decide where children learn. A federal judge just held Texas to that principle. The lesson isn't that school choice failed. The lesson is that if you're going to build the program, build it right.