A federal judge will hear oral argument on Thursday, April 24, on a request for a permanent injunction in the Texas voucher case. The hearing is the product of 15 months of state legislative action, administrative rulemaking, and district-court litigation. For readers encountering the case for the first time this week — through amicus coverage, cable segments, or the pre-hearing commentary now saturating legal-adjacent outlets — the chronological record is the fastest way into the substance.

This article is that record. Every date and every filing referenced below is documented in the Texas Legislature's official bill-tracking system, the Texas Comptroller's rulemaking archive, or the federal court docket in the Northern District of Texas. No source here is private. None of it requires subscription access.

January 2025 — Senate Bill 2 Is Signed

The Texas school-choice program at issue in the federal litigation was created by Senate Bill 2, enacted at the start of the 2025 legislative session. According to the Texas Legislature Online bill history, SB 2 was introduced, passed by the Texas Senate, passed by the Texas House with amendments, reconciled in conference committee, and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott during January 2025. The bill appropriated approximately $1 billion for an education-savings-account program that was publicly described as the largest school-choice program in the nation at the time of enactment.

The bill's participation criteria, as drafted, were facially neutral. Private schools could participate if they met specified academic, accreditation, and administrative criteria. There was no religious exclusion in the bill text. The bill as enrolled has been available on the Legislature's public website since January 2025.

May 2025 — The Comptroller's Rulemaking

Administration of the program was delegated to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. In May 2025, per rulemaking records on the Comptroller's website, the office issued implementing regulations that interpreted the SB 2 participation criteria. The regulations included provisions allowing the Comptroller's office to decline to include specific institutions in the program if the office determined that participation would create an unacceptable risk under defined national-security and program-integrity criteria.

The regulations did not, on their face, name any religion. The criteria were framed in terms of foreign funding, institutional governance, and curricular content. Critics of the regulations argued at the time — per public comment records archived with the Comptroller's rulemaking docket — that the criteria were drafted to support a status-based exclusion in practical application. Supporters argued that the criteria were standard due-diligence provisions appropriate for any program subject to national-security review.

September 2025 — First Exclusion Determinations

By September 2025, the Comptroller's office had begun issuing participation determinations. Per public responses to open-records requests filed with the office and subsequent reporting by the Texas Tribune, the office excluded several private schools associated with particular religious communities from program participation, citing the national-security provisions in the May 2025 regulations.

The excluded schools and their sponsoring communities argued that the exclusion decisions were based on religious identity rather than on neutral application of the regulatory criteria. The Comptroller's office maintained that each decision was individualized and rested on specific program-integrity findings rather than on the religious character of the applicant.

November 2025 — Litigation Filed

In November 2025, per the federal court docket in the Northern District of Texas, a coalition of plaintiffs including excluded schools and their sponsoring families filed suit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The complaint, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017), Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), and Carson v. Makin (2022), argued that the Comptroller's exclusion criteria violated the Free Exercise Clause by conditioning a generally available public benefit on religious status.

The state's response, filed in December 2025, argued that the Comptroller's criteria were neutral and generally applicable, that individualized determinations were permitted under state program-integrity statutes, and that the court should defer to the state's judgment under the line of cases flowing from Locke v. Davey (2004).

January 2026 — Preliminary Injunction Granted

In January 2026, per the federal court docket, the district court issued a preliminary injunction against the application of the Comptroller's exclusion criteria pending further proceedings. The court's order — which is publicly accessible through the PACER docket system — found that the plaintiffs had demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their Free Exercise claim and that the balance of equities favored preliminary relief.

The state appealed the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit declined to stay the injunction pending appeal. The appeal remains pending as of this writing, and the district-court proceedings have continued on a parallel track.

February–April 2026 — Discovery and Summary Judgment Briefing

Between February and April 2026, the parties conducted discovery and filed cross-motions for summary judgment. According to the federal court docket, the summary-judgment motions briefed the following core questions:

First, whether the Comptroller's May 2025 regulations are neutral and generally applicable under the framework established by Employment Division v. Smith (1990) and refined in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021).

Second, whether the individualized-determination process described in the May 2025 regulations produces religious status-based exclusion in operation, even if the regulations are facially neutral.

Third, whether the state's national-security predicate satisfies the strict-scrutiny standard applied under Trinity Lutheran to programs that condition a generally available benefit on religious status.

Fourth, whether the state's asserted interest in program integrity can be advanced by less restrictive means than categorical exclusion of institutions whose religious affiliation has been identified as a factor in the Comptroller's determinations.

April 24, 2026 — The Permanent Injunction Hearing

The oral argument scheduled for Thursday, April 24, is on the pending motion for a permanent injunction. Unlike the January 2026 preliminary injunction, which rested on a likelihood-of-success standard, a permanent injunction requires the court to decide the merits of the plaintiffs' Free Exercise claim.

If the court grants the permanent injunction, the Comptroller's exclusion criteria are enjoined on the merits. The state's options are to appeal and to rewrite the criteria to address the court's findings. If the court denies the injunction, the preliminary injunction is dissolved and the Comptroller's criteria can be applied to the current participation docket subject to any subsequent appeal by the plaintiffs.

Regardless of the outcome, the case is positioned to become a circuit-court vehicle. The Fifth Circuit has already received the preliminary-injunction appeal. A permanent-injunction ruling would be appealable as well. Whichever party loses at the district-court level will have an opportunity to place the case before a three-judge Fifth Circuit panel — and potentially before the full Fifth Circuit en banc — before any Supreme Court petition ripens.

What Thursday's Hearing Will Decide

Thursday's hearing will not decide whether the state can ever run a school-choice program that includes program-integrity review. It will decide whether the specific criteria adopted in May 2025 and applied in the Comptroller's exclusion determinations in September 2025 — as those criteria have operated in the factual record built during discovery — comply with the Free Exercise Clause as interpreted by Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson.

The legal framework the court will apply is not ambiguous. Under the post-Trinity Lutheran trilogy, a state program that conditions a generally available benefit on religious status triggers strict scrutiny. The factual question at the heart of the case is whether the Comptroller's criteria, as applied, function as a status-based condition despite their facially neutral drafting. That is an evidentiary question — resolved on the record the parties built during discovery between February and April.

Why It Matters

The Texas voucher case is one of several cases in federal district courts this spring that will shape the next generation of religious-liberty jurisprudence. Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson built a doctrinal architecture. The lower courts are now applying that architecture to programs whose administrators have built in discretionary exclusion mechanisms. How Thursday's court reads the factual record will influence how other district courts read similar records across the coming year.

The chronological record above is not exhaustive. It is, however, the backbone of the case. Readers encountering the coverage this week who want to verify any item in the timeline can — the documents are public, the dockets are searchable, and the statutes and regulations are archived on the state's own websites.

Bastion's companion reporting on the amicus economy funding the state-side briefs in this hearing inventories the donor network behind the institutions filing in support of the Comptroller's criteria.

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