Judge blocks Ten Commandments request in Texas classroom
A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new law in Texas that would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
Unbranded – Newsworthy
- The governors of both Texas and Florida have deemed the Council on American-Islamic Relations a foreign terrorist organization, and as a result have prohibited it from providing public benefits to certain Islamic schools.
- Parent groups and Islamic schools have filed First Amendment charges against Texas officials over the issue. Even though the state eventually included Islamic schools, the legal battle continues.
- The issue arose amid broader efforts to increase the presence of religion in public spaces, with laws in some states requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
Efforts by state officials in Texas and Florida have raised questions and led to lawsuits over whether taxpayer-funded school voucher programs discriminate against Islamic schools in violation of the First Amendment.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, as a foreign terrorist organization. CAIR has long rejected such characterization and is not on the federal government’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Nevertheless, the Abbott administration has used this designation to justify at least temporarily excluding certain Islamic private schools from the voucher program based on their alleged affiliation with CAIR. On April 6, Mr. DeSantis signed a bill that bans private schools deemed affiliated with or influenced by foreign terrorist organizations.
Experts and CAIR representatives said the Abbott and DeSantis administrations have the burden of proving the allegations in court. They said the effort could amount to illegal religious discrimination unless it can provide evidence to support claims that certain Islamic schools are linked to terrorism.
In an interview with USA TODAY, CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell condemned what he described as a “political stunt” by Abbott and DeSantis.
“There is no Texas exception to the First Amendment,” he said.
The debate over school vouchers and religious freedom comes at a time when states, especially in the conservative South and Midwest, are pushing for a more open display of religion in government and public life, from posting the Ten Commandments in public schools to efforts to establish the nation’s first religious charter schools.
Charter schools are similar to public schools in that they are publicly funded and have free tuition, but they operate independently under an agreement with the government. In contrast, voucher programs like those in Texas and Florida help families pay for tuition at many religiously affiliated private schools.
Travis Pillow, a program spokesperson for the Texas Educational Freedom Account, said the state auditor’s office “needs to investigate whether the applicant’s school is a weapon of a terrorist organization.”
“This is not a religious issue,” he said. “The question is whether the applicant has violated the relevant laws.”
He went on to say that “religion is not involved in the review process,” but did not provide details about what that entails, and said his office “does not have information on the number of Islamic schools that have been admitted to the program.”
Texas and Florida also take similar action against CAIR
Mr. Abbott declared both the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organizations in late 2025. The designation “allows for increased enforcement of both organizations and their affiliates and prohibits them from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas,” his office said.
In December, Mr. DeSantis signed an executive order along similar lines, directing state officials to “prevent illegal conduct by these organizations, including denying privileges and resources to those providing material support.”
The CAIR Foundation and CAIR’s Florida chapter sued DeSantis a few days later. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked enforcement of DeSantis’ order in March while the lawsuit continued, writing that the First Amendment “prohibits governors from continuing the alarming trend of using executive power to make political statements at the expense of the constitutional rights of others.”
CAIR described the effort to link it to the Muslim Brotherhood as “pure McCarthyism” and pointed out that it had not been charged with any crime.
In January, President Donald Trump’s administration designated three specific branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. Similar declarations have been made in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but the United Nations and European Union have not classified this sprawling global group as terrorists.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued both organizations in February, along with CAIR chapters in Austin, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. He tried to ban them from operating in the state and stop their violent ideology from spreading throughout Texas.
In a letter to Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock later that month, the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus said it had not supported the state voucher program since its proposal “due to its negative impact on public schools and fundamental concerns about transparency.”
“However, as long as this program exists, it must be implemented consistently with constitutional and legal guarantees of equal protection and treatment,” the letter states.
USA TODAY has reached out to DeSantis, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Moras and Paxton’s offices for comment.
“A Classic First Amendment Case.”
Mehdi Cherkaoui, a father of two who attends an accredited K-12 Islamic school near Houston, sued Paxton, Hancock and Moras on March 1, based in part on the First Amendment.
His complaint alleges that the state’s action denied him vouchers to his two children, costing him more than $20,000 annually. The School Choice Program will provide $10,474 per private school student in the 2026-2027 school year. The government also accused it of causing “harm to dignity” through “public condemnation” of Islam and “spiritual harm” by burdening the practice of religious beliefs.
Christian and Jewish private schools were allowed to participate in the program, “which denied Muslim families access to benefits available to similarly situated non-Muslim families,” according to the complaint.
A group of both parents and Islamic schools filed similar charges on March 11, and the lawsuits were consolidated later that month.
Mr. Abbott acknowledged in a March 12 post that Islamic schools were excluded from the voucher program.
“We do not want school choice funds to be used to indoctrinate radical Muslims with historical ties to terrorism,” he said.
The lawsuit asked the court to order the state to accept all eligible Islamic schools into the program. Some Islamic schools have since been accepted, according to the Texas Tribune.
But the case, which Mitchell called “a classic First Amendment case,” is still ongoing. A public hearing is scheduled for April 24th.
He said CAIR is prepared to sue if similar efforts occur in other states, but for now, it is watching developments in parent- and school-backed lawsuits.
USA TODAY has reached out to the plaintiffs for comment.
A ‘chilling effect’ in Texas and across the nation
Shaimaa Zayan, operations manager for CAIR’s Austin office, said the efforts have created a “hostile environment” for Islamic schools in the state.
Some students have reportedly been forced into “self-silence” because they fear their safety will be at risk if they become embroiled in a legal battle.
Mary Rose Papandrea, a First Amendment professor at George Washington University, said this reflects a “clear chilling effect” that was widespread across the country under Trump.
She noted that many universities have chosen to settle with the federal government rather than continue long and expensive legal battles.
“There are a lot of rights that often go unproven in this country because litigation is so onerous,” Stephen Collis, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told USA TODAY.
Introduction of Islamic schools, national security claims could benefit the nation
Collis said the issue of taxes supporting private religious schools has been a “confusion” for the better part of a century.
The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another, applied to state governments in the 1940s, but said the law “has not really been resolved” as it relates to public funding for private religious education.
Texas could use the fact that some Islamic schools were eventually admitted to support its argument that the program does not discriminate between religions, but there is no guarantee it will prevail in court, he said.
Papandrea said raising concerns about national security and terrorism is a “proven” way for the government to commit acts that violate the First Amendment.
The Justice Department, for example, made such a claim in defense of the FBI’s unprecedented raid of a Washington Post reporter in January as part of a national security breach investigation.
Mr Mitchell said the state government should “shut up or shut up” in relation to claims that Islamic schools are linked to terrorism. He said charges should be filed where officials have genuine evidentiary reason to believe such a link exists. Otherwise, he said, simply making a declaration and denying certain public benefits as a result is a violation of due process rights, which require the government to follow established and fair legal procedures before depriving someone of “life, liberty, or property.”
But in his view, the school voucher efforts in Texas and Florida are part of broader actions aimed at Muslims. He added that other groups, including Black, Jewish and Latino communities, similarly face “state-sanctioned bigotry” as they fight for “the right to be fully American.”
A wide range of initiatives related to religion and public life across the country
Papandrea said the issue of school voucher programs in Texas and Florida is part of a “much larger, far-reaching and long-term” campaign on religion and national life that has been going on since long before the current Trump administration.
The country has witnessed the fruits of such efforts in recent years.
A 2019 USA TODAY investigation documented that at least 10,000 bills, almost exact copies of model legislation written by special interests rather than lawmakers, were introduced across the country over an eight-year period, and more than 2,100 of them were signed into state law. Copy proposals included efforts to ban Islamic religious law, also known as Sharia law, from U.S. courts and other bills seeking to block Islamic institutions that some say have ties to terrorism without clear evidence.
States such as Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas have passed laws requiring public schools to display the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments in classrooms.
They have had varying degrees of success in litigation.
In March, many school districts in Arkansas were blocked from holding exhibits after a judge found the law had “no educational purpose” and violated plaintiffs’ rights. Meanwhile, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Louisiana to enforce the law, saying there wasn’t enough information yet to preemptively rule it unconstitutional, such as the content of the display or its prominence in classrooms.
In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked on a case that could have created the nation’s first religious charter school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court had previously ruled that allowing the creation of St. Isidore Virtual Charter School in Seville violated the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing a state religion.
Ultimately, Papandrea said, “the march to break down the wall between church and state continues.”
Breanna Frank is USA TODAY’s First Amendment reporter. please contact her bjfrank@usatoday.com.
USA TODAY’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded by the Freedom Forum in collaboration with our journalism funding partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
