The state alleges that the schools are connected to an organization that the governor designated a terrorist group.
Gov. Greg Abbott speaks on the north steps of the Texas Capitol to supporters at a parent empowerment rally in 2023 in Austin. Texas has excluded about two dozen Islamic schools from its new $1 billion voucher program for allegedly being linked to terrorist groups, a decision that has led to a lawsuit and claims of discrimination from the Muslim community.
The state’s comptroller, who oversees the program, barred schools that he said have hosted events organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, a national Muslim civil rights group. The decision came after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared CAIR a terrorist organization in November. CAIR has consistently denied allegations that it is a terrorist group or affiliated with such organizations. While the group has coordinated programs, including civil rights education, for some Islamic schools in Texas, CAIR has never worked with several of the schools that were banned, said Shaimaa Zayan, the operations manager for CAIR-Austin. “They are just using this as a blanket to just discriminate against all Muslim schools,” Zayan told The Washington Post.thousands of taxpayer dollars for their tuition. Texas’s voucher plan - on track to be the largest in the country - will pay families $10,474 per student, money they can use for private school tuition or other education-related expenses when it launches next school year. Children with disabilities will be eligible for up to $30,000, and home-schooled students may qualify for $2,000. The decision has also raised larger questions over who stands to cash in on growing voucher programs, which in most cases benefit private religious schools.“Some of these schools are desperate to participate,” said Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private Schools Association, an advocacy group asking that schools be allowed to prove they are not tied to terrorist organizations. “They have strong community culture, they’re excellent schools, so I hate that they’re being cast in a negative light.” When Abbott designated CAIR as a terrorist group last year, he pointed to a report from the George Washington University Program on Extremism that said U.S. authorities had evidence that CAIR emerged in the 1990s out of a network of pro-Hamas groups. CAIR sued, calling the governor’s executive order “unconstitutional and defamatory.” The group does not appear on federal lists of foreign terrorist organizations or transnational criminal organizations. Weeks later, in mid-December, acting Texas comptroller Kelly Hancock started inviting schools to apply to participate in the voucher program. He wrote to the state’s attorney general, asking whether some schools could be barred.The comptroller also said he was aware of a school that may be linked to “foreign adversaries seeking influence over U.S. education, specifically, an adviser to the Chinese communist government.” “The people of Texas deserve the highest assurance that no taxpayer dollars will be used, directly or indirectly, to support institutions with ties to a foreign terrorist organization, a transnational criminal network, or any adversarial foreign government,” Hancock wrote. Ken Paxton, the attorney general, confirmed Hancock’s authority to block or remove schools from the voucher program. Paxton’s office did not return requests for comment. The comptroller’s office did not include in its letter to Paxton any evidence that schools had ties with CAIR, terrorist organizations or foreign governments. Hancock’s office did not respond to questions or multiple requests for comment from The Post. Meanwhile, a parallel effort appears to be unfolding in Florida. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis deemed CAIR to be a terrorist organization in an executive order in December, a month after Texas’s declaration. CAIR challenged that claim in a lawsuit, and a federal judge blocked DeSantis’s order last week.The state’s Republican-controlled House and Senate, however, passed a bill that will allow a small number of state officials to designate groups as terrorist organizations. The measure, which faces another vote before it heads to the governor’s office for final approval, would also bar schools with ties to those groups from receiving voucher funds. Florida state Rep. Hillary Cassel, a Republican who introduced the measure, told fellow lawmakers the bill will keep public money from supporting terrorist organizations. Democrats, however, say it will allow Florida to discriminate. “We are concerned that it would basically empower the state of Florida to target and brand organizations they don’t like,” said Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani. “It would impact thousands of kids.” As of early March, more than 160,000 students have signed up for the Texas voucher plan, and 2,208 schools have been approved. They include diverse offerings, such as Montessori, Christian and Jewish private schools.accredited private Islamic schools, were not invited to participate, according to Colangelo. The non-Islamic schools that are not taking part “may or may not want to participate,” she said, adding that she has not heard complaints from those schools. It is unclear why those schools were not included or whether they have anything in common. Mehdi Cherkaoui, a Texas parent and attorney, filed a lawsuit early this month asking a judge to stop the voucher program from discriminating on the basis of religion.school that “has been excluded from the state’s list of approved schools,” according to the lawsuit that names Paxton, Hancock and Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath as defendants. A spokesperson from the state’s education department declined to comment on the lawsuit. Officials from Paxton’s and Hancock’s offices did not return multiple requests for comment. In an interview, Cherkaoui said it was important to raise his children with the same principles that shaped his upbringing in Morocco. So he sent them to an Islamic school, where he pays $17,910 in tuition for both children. Cherkaoui had hoped to cash in on the state’s voucher program, which would have provided more than $20,000 per year in public funds for his children, covering all tuition his family now pays. Clashes over whether Islamic schools should be included in Texas’s voucher program came during a primary election season that was steeped in anti-Muslim rhetoric - exacerbated by a March 1 shooting in an Austin bar that several Republicans have said was linked to “radical Islam.” “The fallback has always been, let’s go to our punching bags: Muslims or Islam, and just try to stoke this hatred of Muslims and Islam in general,” Cherkaoui said. “My case is about a clear and blatant deprivation of civil rights of U.S. citizens.” What’s unfolding in Texas and Florida could influence how these schools are treated as the nation’s first federal voucher program launches next year, said Shaza Khan, executive director of the Islamic Schools League of America. The federal program will give Americans a 100 percent tax credit - all their money back - when they donate up to $1,700 to nonprofit organizations that manage the program in each state. It takes effect in 2027 and is estimated to cost $26 billion over 10 years. “Islamic schools and Islamic institutions are very much feeling under attack by the administration,” a feeling that dates to the travel ban that President Donald Trump placed on Muslim-majority countries during his first term, Khan said. “We’re worried that this is somehow going to be yielded in some form or fashion when the federal education tax credit is implemented in 2027.” Voucher programs should be open to all faiths, but with limits, said Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights, a conservative nonprofit law firm in Chicago. He said school choice critics for years had warned about vouchers supporting extremist groups - now states are moving to prevent that. “This is a policy on the part of the states that says, we don’t want to see these taxpayer dollars flow through institutions that are affiliated with our adversaries and aren’t going to provide a good, patriotic education for our kids,” he said. “If the state can show that violates the state’s policy, then so be it.”As Israel targets Iran, Gaza’s nascent recovery stalls and Hamas gains strength
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