Texas officials now face a second federal lawsuit over the state’s exclusion of Islamic private school from participating in the state’s school voucher program.
Earlier this month, a parent acting on behalf of two children attending a Houston private school cut out of the state program filed a federal anti-discrimination lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock and Education Commissioner Mike Morath.
The petition accuses the three Republican officials of violating the U.S. Constitution by denying access to vouchers to cover part of the students’ tuition because they attend Qur’an Academy Spring, a Muslim school.
The second lawsuit, filed Wednesday, also alleges the state is discriminating on the basis of religion as it prevents parents from using vouchers at accredited Muslim campuses, according to the Texas Tribune.
The newest suit was filed by Bayaan Academy, the Islamic Services Foundation and The Eagle Institute, which operate schools in the Lone Star State. Three parents with students attending their campuses are also listed as plaintiffs.
Texas is in the legal crosshairs because Hancock — an ally of Gov. Greg Abbott and overseer of the state’s voucher program — requested an opinion from Paxton late last year on whether he could keep schools from the voucher program if they have ties to terror groups or overseas adversaries, the Tribune reports.
In his filing, Hancock asserts that campuses tied to the accreditation company Cognia hosted events organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group Abbott last fall designated as a “transnational criminal organization.”
CAIR has since sued, arguing that the governor’s claim is “defamatory and finds no basis in law or fact.”
Even so, Paxton in January gave Hancock the green light to bar schools from the state’s voucher program if they are “illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries,” according to the Texas Tribune.
The comptroller’s office said it’s investigating the Cognia schools and eventually will allow those in compliance with Paxton’s ruling into the voucher program. However, the state still has not accepted a single Islamic campus into the program, according to the Tribune, and it remains unclear what the state’s review of the schools involves.
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