A federal judge stepped in Tuesday to halt Texas' school voucher application deadline hours before it was set to expire, ordering the state to extend the window to March 31 after Islamic schools said they were never given the chance to apply - let alone get approved.
U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett ordered Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock to extend the Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) application deadline after four Muslim parents and three Islamic private schools sued the comptroller's office claiming religious discrimination.
The order pumps the brakes on a program that had been moving at full speed. More than 229,000 students have already applied, and 2,200 schools have signed up to participate - but the extended deadline does not guarantee Islamic schools will be accepted into the program.
Under the court order, two schools named in the lawsuits - Excellence Academy and Houston Quran Academy in Katy - must be sent registration links within 24 hours. A permanent injunction hearing is set for April 24.
One parent plaintiff described the experience of discovering his children's school was blocked. "When I spoke with the principal and other parents, we all heard the same thing - Islamic schools in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin were not even allowed to apply, much less approved," said plaintiff Cherkaoui.
The exclusion traces back to a dispute over the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Hancock had asked Attorney General Ken Paxton for guidance in December, citing concerns that some applicant schools had hosted events with CAIR, which Gov. Greg Abbott designated a terrorist organization in November. CAIR has sued Abbott over the label, calling it defamatory and false. The U.S. State Department has not designated CAIR a terrorist group.
Paxton issued a non-binding opinion in January supporting Hancock's concerns but left responsibility for investigating individual schools and determining eligibility back to the comptroller's office.
Hancock framed the court-ordered extension in neutral terms. "This two-week extension will give families an additional opportunity to apply for the first year of school choice in Texas," Hancock said in a statement acknowledging the order.
TEFA, the $1 billion voucher program created by the Texas Legislature in 2025, is already over-subscribed - with current applicants far exceeding the roughly 90,000 students the funding can support, triggering a lottery system.
The program's first year has also been complicated by confusion over special education funding rules. Some families with disabled children didn't know they needed a formal evaluation from a public school to qualify for additional voucher money - documentation that can take months to obtain - while the original application window lasted just 41 days.
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