HOUSTON — A federal judge on Thursday said he will allow Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office to excuse itself from representing acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock’s office in a lawsuit alleging religious discrimination in the new school voucher program after a dramatic fallout between the two offices. 

U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett said he will grant Paxton’s request to withdraw from the case once the comptroller finds a new attorney.

“I do not want the comptroller to be unrepresented,” Bennett said. “Not one day.”

The judge noted that the next hearing for the case is set for April 24, and he wants to avoid any delay. 

If the comptroller’s office wants to “pick your own lawyers, that’s fine,” the judge said, but there should be a “seamless transition.” 

The attorney general’s office on Thursday said the comptroller’s office is in the process of finding new lawyers. Neither Paxton’s nor Hancock’s offices immediately responded to requests for comment.

Thursday’s hearing comes about a week into the unusually public clash between two of Texas’ top GOP officials. 

The feud was set in motion last week when Hancock fired off a letter to Paxton, obtained by Texas Bullpen, criticizing the attorney general’s legal strategy in a case centering on whether Islamic schools can receive funds through the state’s $1 billion school voucher program. 

Hancock, whose office manages the program, said Paxton had missed major marks on the case, such as failing to highlight connections between one of the schools, Houston Quran Academy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, a multinational organization with no central figure. 

“The court cannot protect against threats it does not know exist,” Hancock wrote. 

Paxton responded to Hancock in a letter of his own, saying the acting comptroller’s “petty politics” had “single-handedly destroyed my ability to defend the Comptroller’s office in these cases.”

Paxton contended that Hancock undermined the state’s defense by leaking his letter, which included statements not presented in sworn declarations to the court and ultimately risked attorney-client privilege. 

Paxton punctuated his point, calling Hancock, a former state senator, an “incompetent loser” and “embarrassment” to the position of the state’s chief financial officer.

Hancock was appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June after Glenn Hegar left to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. 

This isn’t the first clash between Paxton and Hancock. In 2023, Hancock was one of two Republican state senators to vote to impeach Paxton on some of the charges levied by the House.

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs on Thursday said they were grateful for the judge’s decision. 

“This is the largest school voucher program in the country,” attorney Maha Ghyas told The Texas Tribune. “We have to ensure that the administration and disbursement of those funds are done in accordance with the law.”

Several Muslim families and Islamic schools sued state leaders over their exclusion from the voucher program, alleging religious discrimination. The two lawsuits, which were recently consolidated, ask the court to require the comptroller to accept all Islamic schools that meet program requirements. It also seeks to prevent the state from delaying or denying schools’ approval based on religious identity or unsubstantiated allegations. 

The legal challenge comes against the backdrop of a midterm cycle during which Texas Republicans have ratcheted up their anti-Muslim rhetoric, taking aim at what one GOP candidate described as a “coordinated political effort to Islamify Texas.”

As his own primary was ramping up in December, Hancock asked Paxton to weigh in on whether private schools could be excluded from the voucher program based on ties to a “foreign terrorist organization” or a “foreign adversary.” In requesting the opinion, Hancock suggested that standard could be used to bar schools that had hosted events for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group designated by Abbott as a terrorist organization. CAIR has sued Abbott over the label, calling it defamatory.

Paxton followed suit with a legal opinion giving Hancock the green light to exclude schools that provide material support for foreign terrorist organizations. But he declined to say whether hosting events for CAIR was an example of such “material support,” writing that it was up to the comptroller to vet schools’ eligibility. In a recent court hearing in the religious discrimination lawsuit, lawyers from Paxton’s office said they were unaware of any Islamic schools that had engaged in terrorism or broken state laws. 

Rather, the comptroller had not accepted the Islamic schools in the lawsuit, state lawyers wrote in court filings, over concerns about the company that accredited them. Soon after, Hancock fired off the missive to Paxton slamming his office’s legal strategy and urging him to “highlight the full details about the terror ties of Houston Quran Academy — and any such ties for other plaintiff schools.”

The judge decided to extend the school voucher deadline over the dispute. He expressed concern that the state had exclusively blocked all Islamic schools from registering for the program while allowing hundreds of other schools, including those with a religious focus, to participate. 

Bennett ordered the comptroller to provide the suing campuses an opportunity to register, and Hancock’s office has since accepted all eligible Islamic schools to the program. 

The state’s top attorney has routinely declined to represent state agencies. A 2023 investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found Paxton denied requests from state agencies for representation at least 75 times. He’s even sued a state agency. 

Paxton is challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, for a Senate seat; they will face each other in the May 26 runoff election. The Cornyn campaign’s senior advisor called Paxton’s withdrawal from the case a “selfish and indefensible decision.

“Ken Paxton refuses to defend the State of Texas,” Matt Mackowiak said. “He has now withdrawn his defense of the Texas Comptroller’s Office and apparently agrees that Muslim schools should receive taxpayer benefits … Ken Paxton’s poor judgment, documented mismanagement, and selfishness continue to hurt Texas.” 

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