Judge keeps fair-housing deal alive for Collin County development

A Travis County judge has kept a fair-housing settlement alive for The Meadow, the 402-acre planned development near Josephine that has become one of the most politically charged growth fights in Collin County. The ruling ordered the Texas Workforce Commission to follow through on a September 15, 2025 conciliation agreement with Community Capital Partners, even as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office filed an appeal on May 1 that paused enforcement while the case moves to the Fifteenth Court of Appeals.

The agreement matters because it sets the rules for how the project can be marketed and sold. It requires Community Capital Partners leadership to undergo fair-housing training, review marketing and sales materials for non-discrimination, adopt fair-housing policies, use only objective and business-related applicant criteria, and submit reports and documents to the agency for five years. For a project as visible as The Meadow, those requirements shape not just paperwork, but how the development will be presented to future buyers and residents.

The project, formerly known as EPIC City, spans land in unincorporated Collin and Hunt counties, about 40 miles northeast of Dallas. Community Capital Partners says the master-planned community would include more than 1,000 homes, a mosque, a K-12 faith-based school, a community college, retail space and a senior living center. The proposal drew intense attention after it was publicly promoted in 2024, and the name later changed to The Meadow.

That scrutiny has already reached Collin County’s public hearing room. When county commissioners took up the proposal in 2025, more than 60 people spoke and all but two opposed it. County officials said at the time that no subdivision plat or development application had been submitted. The hearing showed how quickly a development that is still largely on paper has become a test of local nerves over growth, religion and land use.

The legal fight has widened far beyond the county line. In March 2025, Gov. Greg Abbott announced multiple investigations involving EPIC and affiliated entities, including probes by the Texas Workforce Commission, the Texas State Securities Board, the Texas Funeral Service Commission, the Texas Rangers and the attorney general’s office. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation into alleged religious discrimination closed in June 2025 after the developer said it would comply with the Fair Housing Act. Abbott also signed a law that took effect in June 2025 targeting the business and legal structure of EPIC City.

Supporters and opponents see the latest ruling through completely different lenses. Community Capital Partners president Imran Chaudhary has said the company welcomed the workforce commission review and believed it made the planned community stronger and more diverse. The company’s lawyer, Eric Hudson, has argued the state’s delay was discriminatory and that the project was being treated differently because of its Muslim affiliation. State officials, including Abbott and Paxton, have repeatedly cast the project as a possible Sharia-based threat, an accusation the developer has denied.

The appeal now shifts the dispute into a court with statewide civil jurisdiction over cases involving state agencies. For Collin County, the result will help determine whether a major regional development can move forward under a fair-housing settlement or remain trapped in a larger political and legal fight over who gets to build, who gets reviewed and how much power the state should have over local growth.