A Houston-area Muslim parent has filed a federal lawsuit accusing Texas officials of religious discrimination by categorically excluding Islamic private schools from the state's new school voucher program.

The lawsuit filed March 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas names Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, who administers the Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) voucher program, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Education Commissioner Mike Morath as defendants.

The TEFA program, enacted with the passage of Senate Bill 2, initially allocates $1 billion for eligible families to use public funds for private tuition, capped at 90,000 students, with priority for lower-income households and those with special needs.

Plaintiff Mehdi Cherkaoui, a Harris County resident, attorney and father of two children attending Houston Qur'an Academy Spring (HQA Spring), alleges that state officials have "systematically targeted Islamic schools for exclusion" based on their religious identity. He claims HQA Spring meets all neutral statutory requirements for participation but has been blocked due to "impermissible religious gerrymanders" by Hancock and categorical presumptions related to "Islamic ties."

HQA Spring is a private, full-time Islamic school in Spring, a city in the Houston metro area, with students from pre-K to 12th grade. The school — which bills itself as Houston's largest Cognia-accredited Islamic school — offers standard academics with Quran memorization, Arabic, Islamic studies and character development. According to its website, HQA Spring’s mission is "to nurture the next generation of practicing Muslim leaders” and cites a vision drawn from the Quranic phrase, “Make Us Leaders for the Righteous."

The HQA Spring website names the school's principal as Dr. Hamed Ghazali, who also serves as the chairman of the MAS Council of Islamic Schools, a professor at Islamic American University, and the former vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). 

The complaint highlights that no accredited Islamic private school has been approved for TEFA, despite hundreds of other private schools — including many Christian ones — being included. Applications for parents opened on Feb. 4, 2026.

"HQA Spring has hosted or permitted use of its facilities for community events, including educational ‘Know Your Rights’ presentations open to parents and students regarding civil rights and legal protections available under U.S. law — the type of civic engagement and community service routinely hosted by religious institutions of all denominations," the lawsuit states.

The complaint also alleges the school’s 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."

Hancock requested a legal opinion from Paxton in December 2025 on barring schools with alleged ties to Council on American-Islamic Relations events or foreign adversaries. In January 2026, Paxton affirmed the comptroller's authority under Senate Bill 2's "other relevant law[s]" provision.

In November, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared CAIR a "foreign terrorist organization," prompting a lawsuit from the organization. 

"Let me be crystal clear: Texans’ tax dollars should never fund Islamic terrorists or America’s enemies," Paxton said of the opinion in a Jan. 26 statement. "The Comptroller’s Office has always possessed exclusive authority under the TEFA framework to stop any school illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries from accessing taxpayer dollars, and this opinion affirms that authority. There is no question that the Comptroller’s Office is statutorily charged with ensuring that our school choice program is protected from abuse by terrorists or the Chinese Communist Party."

Cherkaoui maintains that HQA Spring has no terrorist ties and meets requirements. He seeks a court order to process the school's application "under the same neutral, non-discriminatory standards applied to non-Islamic private schools," plus emergency relief before the March 17 parent enrollment deadline. He says his children's tuition would be offset by up to nearly $10,500 per child if approved, potentially totaling over $20,000.

The Comptroller's Office did not respond to a request for comment by The Christian Post.

Last month, the Comptroller's Office reported over 100,000 TEFA applications in the first two weeks, calling it a “historic milestone.” The program uses a lottery if oversubscribed, prioritizing certain groups. Seven in 10 applicants are from low- or middle-income households. 

“Texas families are embracing a new era of educational freedom at historic levels,” Hancock said in a Feb. 16 press release. “For years, parents have asked for more control and more choices when it comes to their children’s education. Texas is delivering, and families are seizing the opportunity.”

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