Five days before a federal judge is scheduled to hear oral argument on a permanent injunction in the Texas voucher case, the filings arriving in the judge's chambers tell a smaller story than the funding arriving at the institutions filing them. Amicus briefs in district court are not required to disclose which donors underwrite the research they present. The briefs arrive as independent voices. The donors behind the voices do not.

This article is a ledger of what the docket will look like by Thursday — who is filing on each side, what arguments they will make, and what the public disclosures reveal about the funders behind them. It is the follow-up to Bastion Daily's April 17 piece on the mechanics of pre-hearing influence. That piece described the playbook. This one identifies the players.

What the Hearing Is About

The April 24 hearing is an oral argument on a request for a permanent injunction in litigation over the Texas voucher program enacted in 2025. The plaintiffs argue that the program's administration has allowed the state to exclude specific private religious schools from participation on national-security grounds that, plaintiffs contend, are not neutral toward religion. The state's position is that participation criteria are general and that exclusion decisions are individualized. The hearing will determine whether the court issues a permanent order against the exclusion criteria or allows the criteria to remain in place through further proceedings.

The legal standard the court must apply is well established. According to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, a state program that conditions a generally available benefit on religious status triggers strict scrutiny. In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the Court extended that principle to school aid specifically. In Carson v. Makin, the Court ruled that a state cannot exclude religious schools from a tuition-assistance program where the schools meet neutral criteria. Every amicus brief filed this week will argue about where the facts in the Texas case sit within that three-decision framework.

Who Is Filing on the Plaintiffs' Side

The plaintiffs — families and schools challenging the exclusion criteria — will be supported by a cluster of religious-liberty litigation organizations with overlapping donor networks. Public tax filings and organizational disclosures identify at least four likely filers.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has litigated every major Supreme Court religious-liberty case of the last decade, including Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, Carson, and the Religious Liberty Commission. According to Becket's most recent IRS Form 990, posted on its website, the organization reported approximately $13 million in revenue in fiscal year 2023. Becket does not publicly identify individual donors, but its 990 reports show the share of revenue that comes from foundation grants and individual contributions. Becket has historically taken the lead-plaintiff role in religious-liberty cases of this profile; a brief on the plaintiffs' side is a near-certainty.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is the other major litigation shop that files amicus briefs in voucher-exclusion cases. Per ADF's 2023 annual report, the organization reported revenue above $100 million and lists religious-school-choice cases as a core docket area. ADF has coordinated with state attorneys general on religious-liberty cases for two decades and maintains relationships with the Federalist Society bench.

The Religious Freedom Institute, founded by former Georgetown scholars, produces the academic-style briefs that translate litigation arguments into the "religious pluralism" frame that resonates with centrist federal judges. According to RFI's website, the institute partners with the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion and the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic on amicus filings.

A coalition of state-level religious-liberty organizations, including several with ties to the First Liberty Institute, typically files a joint amicus on the plaintiff side in voucher cases. First Liberty's fiscal year 2023 filings available on its public financial disclosure page list revenue near $30 million.

The argumentative arc on this side is predictable: Trinity Lutheran forbids a generally available benefit from being conditioned on religious status; Carson forbids exclusion of religious schools from school-choice programs; the Texas exclusion criteria, however facially neutral, function as a status-based carve-out in application. That is the frame the court will hear.

Who Is Filing on the State's Side

The state's amicus supporters are a different cluster — smaller in number, heavier in think-tank rather than litigation footprint, and with disclosed donor overlap that a court is not asked to examine.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has filed amicus briefs in prior religious-liberty cases where the state sought exclusion on national-security grounds. According to FDD's most recent Form 990 available through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, the organization reported approximately $14.6 million in program expenses in fiscal year 2022. FDD does not disclose its donors. Bastion Daily reported on Friday that Pentagon contractor grants account for roughly $7 million of the think-tank network funding the pro-surveillance and pro-exclusion positions on the policy side.

The Middle East Forum, per its IRS 990 filings available through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, reported revenue of approximately $3.5 million in recent fiscal years. MEF operates a "Legal Project" that files amicus briefs and supports state-level exclusion statutes in multiple jurisdictions.

The Heritage Foundation's legal shop typically files a high-gloss amicus brief on the state's side in cases where religious-liberty doctrine is in tension with state national-security claims. Heritage's FY2023 Form 990 on its annual report page shows total revenue of approximately $110 million. Heritage has been consistent in favoring state authority over religious-exclusion judgments where national-security predicates are asserted.

The Federalist Society does not typically file amicus briefs in its own name but hosts forums and convenings at which state-side arguments are refined. The organization's FY2023 Form 990 reports approximately $27 million in revenue. The Federalist Society's role is architectural rather than directly evidentiary: it shapes the bench and the briefing culture but does not itself take positions on the docket.

The argumentative arc on this side will focus on the state's latitude under the Locke v. Davey line — the 2004 Supreme Court opinion holding that a state can decline to fund certain religious uses without violating the Free Exercise Clause — and on the national-security predicate as a compelling governmental interest that satisfies strict scrutiny.

What the Donor Overlap Looks Like

The public records available on the think-tank side of the docket show the following pattern, per OpenSecrets' Center for Responsive Politics database and public IRS Form 990 filings made available through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer:

  • FDD, MEF, and Heritage each list the same small cluster of family foundations as identified donors in their disclosed fundraising materials.
  • Donor-advised fund pass-throughs — the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Schwab Charitable Fund, and DonorsTrust — serve as intermediaries for a substantial share of giving to all three organizations. Those intermediaries are not required to disclose original donors.
  • Pentagon-contractor grants to the network were the subject of Bastion Daily's April 17 reporting.

The court hearing oral argument on Thursday will not be shown any of this. The briefs will arrive as the independent voices of independent organizations. The court's rules require no more. Other federal courts have moved toward greater amicus-disclosure requirements — a 2023 Judicial Conference proposal would have required identification of organizations that contributed more than $100 in a twelve-month period — but at the district-court level no such requirement is in force.

What This Means for Thursday

A federal judge deciding whether to issue a permanent injunction will read the briefs, hear the oral argument, and consult the relevant precedent. What the judge will not see on the docket is the overlapping funder network behind the state-side amicus cluster, or the three-decade institutional investment in producing briefs that arrive in chambers presenting as independent scholarship.

The Carson v. Makin standard is clear: a state cannot exclude religious schools from a generally available benefit on the basis of religious status. The state's Thursday argument will depend on persuading the court that its exclusion criteria are status-neutral in application. The amicus filings arriving on the state's side of the docket this week are the architecture of that argument. Their funding footprint is disclosed in places the court will not read.

Why It Matters

The April 24 hearing is one of four or five religious-liberty cases moving through federal district courts this spring with potential to become circuit-split vehicles for a Supreme Court petition in the 2026–27 term. How the court handles the amicus record — which briefs receive weight, which are discounted as advocacy filings, which shape the opinion's reasoning — is a signal about how lower-court judges are beginning to read the donor architecture that Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson left in place.

The amicus economy is not illegal. It is, in the formal sense, fully compliant with court rules. What it is not is transparent. The funders of the briefs the judge will read on Thursday have spent three decades building the institutions that will file them. The institutions do not have to name the funders. The public record shows who they are anyway — for readers willing to consult IRS Form 990s, OpenSecrets, and ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. The court is not asked to.

VALOR Institute's dark-money pipeline report traces the donor-advised fund and family-foundation architecture that stands behind the state-side amicus cluster described above.

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