Not a single Islamic school made the list. Not one — out of hundreds approved across Texas. That’s the allegation at the center of two federal lawsuits that have thrown the state’s landmark school voucher program into legal turmoil before it’s even fully off the ground.
Texas launched the Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) program with considerable fanfare — the largest school choice initiative in the country, offering families up to $10,474 per student for the 2026–27 school year to spend on private tuition, tutoring, and homeschooling expenses. By March 8, more than 163,000 student applications had poured in. But Muslim families who hoped to use those funds at Islamic schools hit a wall. As of March 9, 2026, confirmed by reporting on the program’s rollout, zero Islamic schools had been approved statewide.
The Lawsuits
Filed on March 1 and March 11, the complaints allege something blunt and hard to explain away: that Islamic schools meeting TEFA’s eligibility requirements were systematically left off the program’s preapproved list while hundreds of other private institutions — including Christian schools — sailed through the process. The language in the filings doesn’t mince words. As one lawsuit stated, “Defendants have refused to let K through 12 Islamic schools through the door to TEFA participation, while holding the door open to thousands of other similarly situated private schools across Texas.”
That’s a serious charge. TEFA’s eligibility criteria aren’t exactly obscure — schools must operate in Texas, maintain accreditation through a recognized organization, have been running for at least two years, administer nationally norm-referenced assessments, and comply with health and safety laws. Straightforward stuff, on paper. Yet somehow, no accredited Islamic private school in the entire state cleared those hurdles in the program’s initial approvals. The plaintiffs say that’s not a coincidence.
The State’s Defense
State officials haven’t been quiet about where they stand. Mandy Drogin, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, put it plainly. “The governor and the comptroller’s team have made it abundantly clear, as has the attorney general, that in no way will the state of Texas be providing funding to entities tied to foreign terrorist groups,” she told Education Week. It’s a framing that critics argue conflates all Islamic schools with extremism — a leap that the lawsuits contend is both legally indefensible and constitutionally prohibited.
Still, the state hasn’t formally elaborated on why specific schools like Excellence Academy or Katy Houston Qur’an Academy were denied access to the program’s registration process. That silence became its own kind of problem in court.
A Federal Judge Steps In
How quickly did this escalate? Fast. A federal judge intervened and ordered the Texas comptroller to provide registration links to both Excellence Academy and Katy Houston Qur’an Academy within 24 hours of the ruling. The court also extended the TEFA application deadline from its original cutoff to March 31 — a direct acknowledgment that the exclusion of Islamic schools had potentially denied affected families a fair shot at the program entirely.
Reaction to the ruling was swift. “We welcome the court’s decision to extend the application deadline and recognize the serious concerns raised about the exclusion of Islamic schools from Texas’ voucher program,” one statement noted. “All families, regardless of their faith, deserve equal access to educational opportunities supported by public programs.” Straightforward sentiment — though whether the courts ultimately agree will take considerably longer to resolve.
The Bigger Picture
But it’s not that simple. The TEFA program, administered through the Texas comptroller’s office, was designed as a broad expansion of parental choice — the kind of policy that conservatives have championed for years on the grounds that public dollars should follow students, not school districts. The irony of that argument colliding with the apparent exclusion of one faith group is not lost on legal observers. If the program’s defenders believe families deserve freedom to choose, the question becomes: which families?
The lawsuit puts Texas in an uncomfortable position — defending a school choice program against charges that it doesn’t actually extend choice equally. First Amendment implications hover over the entire dispute. Courts have generally held that when a government program opens the door to religious institutions, it can’t selectively exclude some faiths while welcoming others.
The litigation is still in its early stages, and Texas officials are expected to mount a vigorous defense. Whether they can articulate a legally coherent reason — beyond national security rhetoric — for why not a single Islamic school qualified when hundreds of others did will likely determine how this plays out. For now, the program that was supposed to be a triumph of educational freedom has a very specific asterisk attached to it.
School choice, it turns out, is only as principled as the choices it actually allows.
