The Texas Comptroller's Office approved two Islamic private schools from North Texas to participate in the state's taxpayer-funded school choice program on Wednesday, one day after a Houston federal judge ordered the state to consider their applications.

Excellence Academy in McKinney and Brighter Horizons Academy in Garland were cleared for the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program after Judge Alfred Bennett's ruling. The approvals followed a lawsuit from parents and schools alleging the state had blocked Islamic institutions from the application process on the basis of their faith.

The comptroller's office did not comment on the plaintiffs' assertion that their schools were initially denied because of their faith. That silence speaks volumes in a story where the state's own attorney conceded key facts in open court.

A School That's Been Around Longer Than the Debate

Ehsan Sayed, a board member and graduate of Brighter Horizons Academy, told CBS News Texas that learning about the approval was welcome news. The school has operated since 1989, serves 1,200 students in its K-12 program, and has graduated almost 800 alumni.

It's a typical private school with all the subjects, all the wonderful recreational and after-school activities, with the addition of the religious curriculum and classes. And so, as you mentioned, we've been around for over 30 years, graduated hundreds. I want to say almost 800 alumni from the school to date. Just normal and everyday Texans.

Sayed also expressed enthusiasm about the program's potential, noting that the school community had been watching the voucher concept develop for years.

We were excited about the vouchers program when it was first even mentioned, years ago, by the governor, because it would really give our parents and families an opportunity to help with their private education.

These are not fly-by-night institutions. A school that has operated for more than three decades and graduated hundreds of students is, by any reasonable standard, an established part of Texas's educational landscape.

The CAIR Question

The state had maintained that schools with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and CAIR could not be approved for the program. Gov. Greg Abbott has designated CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization, a designation CAIR has sued the state over.

That posture is understandable on its face. No taxpayer dollar should flow to institutions with genuine ties to organizations hostile to American interests. That principle is sound, and defending it is the right instinct.

But a principle only holds weight when it's applied with evidence, not suspicion. And in this case, the state came up short.

Attorney Maha Ghyas, representing Sayed and other plaintiffs, told CBS News Texas that as many as 30 Islamic schools in Texas were blocked from the application process. She stated her clients believe the blocking was rooted in religious identity, not any verified organizational affiliation.

That did come up in the hearing, and the state's attorney confirmed there was no evidence that the comptroller had that either Brighter Horizons or Little Horizons was in any way affiliated with any organization that could be problematic here.

The state conceded the point. No evidence of problematic ties existed for these schools. When your own attorney admits in a federal courtroom that the factual basis for exclusion doesn't exist, a judge is going to act. And Bennett did.

School Choice Means School Choice

Conservatives fought for years to bring school choice to Texas. The argument was always straightforward:

• Parents, not bureaucrats, should decide where education dollars go.
• Religious schools deserve equal access to public programs.
• The government shouldn't pick winners and losers based on ideology or faith.

That argument doesn't come with an asterisk. It doesn't read "religious liberty for some denominations but not others." The constitutional framework that protects Catholic schools and evangelical academies protects Islamic schools too. If the program is open to faith-based education, it is open to faith-based education. Full stop.

This is not a difficult principle. It's the same principle conservatives invoke when the left tries to exclude religious institutions from public funding. You cannot champion Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and then look the other way when a Muslim school with no proven problematic ties gets frozen out of an application process.

If there is real evidence that a specific institution has material ties to a designated terrorist organization, present it. Build the case. Deny the application on documented grounds. That's how a government of laws operates. What you cannot do is cast a blanket over 30 schools and hope the courts don't notice.

The Program Rolls On

Bennett's ruling also extended the state's filing deadline for parents until March 31. Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock framed the extension in positive terms in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon.

This two-week extension will give families an additional opportunity to apply for the first year of school choice in Texas. We look forward to building on the record-setting demand for educational options that we have seen over the first six weeks.

The numbers support that optimism. A spokesman for the comptroller's office said nearly 900 additional students have applied since the ruling Tuesday, bringing total applications to about 230,000. Sayed echoed the sentiment, noting the deadline extension would clear up confusion among parents and drive more applications.

Demand at that scale validates the core conservative case for school choice. A quarter of a million families didn't apply because a think tank told them to. They applied because they want options the public system isn't providing.

Get the Implementation Right

The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program is a landmark achievement. It exists because conservatives pushed through years of legislative resistance and institutional inertia. The worst thing that could happen now is for the implementation to undermine the principle.

Blocking schools without evidence doesn't protect the program. It hands its critics a weapon. Every progressive editorial board in the country would love nothing more than to frame Texas school choice as a vehicle for religious discrimination. Sloppy administration gives them that opening for free.

The program's credibility depends on applying clear, consistent, evidence-based standards to every applicant, regardless of faith tradition. Screen rigorously. Demand transparency. Exclude bad actors with documented cause. But treat every applicant the same until the evidence says otherwise.

Brighter Horizons Academy has been educating Texas kids since 1989. Its graduates are, in Sayed's words, "just normal and everyday Texans." If the state had evidence to the contrary, Tuesday's hearing was the time to produce it. It didn't.

School choice works when the rules apply equally. That's not a concession to the left. That's the whole point.