In East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) v. Texas Funeral Services Commission, (WD TX, Sept. 9, 2026), a Texas federal district court refused to dismiss a suit challenging a cease-and-desist order issued by the Texas Funeral Services Commission. The court said in part:
Islamic religious law calls for prompt ritual cleansing, shrouding, prayer, and burial in which the integrity and dignity of the decedent’s remains are scrupulously maintained. (Id.) To that end, EPIC offers traditional, non-commercial, Muslim funeral rites; especially for Muslim families unable to afford the services. (Id.) EPIC assists Muslim families by arranging and facilitating religious funeral rites (washing, shrouding, and performing the Janaza prayer) in partnership with, and under the supervision of, licensed funeral providers....
On March 26, 2025, the Commission issued a cease-and-desist letter to EPIC.... It ordered EPIC to immediately halt what the Commission alleged were unlicensed funeral service operations....
To comply with the cease-and-desist letter, EPIC reports that it ceased performing religious funeral rites, which resulted in at least eleven congregants being buried without receiving the Janaza prayer at their mosque....
EPIC contends that the Agency Defendants violated both state and federal constitutional and statutory protections for religious exercise, and it claims the Commission exceeded its statutory authority under Texas law.....
EPIC points to the Commission’s prior affirmations that religious organizations could perform burial-related rites so long as they were not doing so for profit.... These allegations, it posits, support its claim that “hysteria” and “religious animus” concerning a planned commercial development in Josephine, Texas, motivated Agency Defendants’ cease-and-desist letter (and the State officials’ comments, generally) rather than any legitimate regulatory concern about EPIC’s not-for-profit performance of sacred Muslim funeral rites....
On July 2, 2025, EPIC filed its Original Petition and Application for Temporary Restraining Order, Temporary Injunction, and Permanent Injunction in the 250th District Court of Travis County.... The Agency Defendants then removed the suit from state court to this Court....
In allowing plaintiffs to move forward with their claims, the court held that the state's removal of the case to federal court waived any claims of sovereign immunity that it would have had in state court. It also held that plaintiffs had adequately pleaded standing and ripeness. The court noted earlier in its opinion:
In the days and weeks before the cease-and-desist letter, EPIC’s Complaint pleads a bevy of public statements attributed to certain State officials that amplified unsubstantiated theories about EPIC’s ties to Sharia law and peddled in Islamophobic tropes....
The court concluded its opinion as follows:
In closing, the Court observes the strong likelihood that James Madison and others who realized their vision for a pluralistic Republic in the federal Constitution would be gravely troubled by the allegations in EPIC’s complaint. At the dawn of the new federal Constitution, Madison’s warning about governments that “employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy” applies equally to those who, as EPIC alleges here, employ religion as an engine of civil regulatory and criminal enforcement.... And like Madison warned and as EPIC now alleges, such conduct amounts to “an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”...