Grand Prairie, Texas finds itself at the center of a firestorm after a taxpayer-funded water park scheduled a private event advertised as exclusively for Muslim attendees — and Governor Greg Abbott stepped in with a financial ultimatum that ended the controversy before it could fully begin.
Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark, an 80,000-square-foot facility with the longest indoor lazy river in North Texas, sits in the heart of Grand Prairie. The city owns it.
Voters funded it in 2017 through a quarter-cent sales tax increase. And for one day this June, organizers had planned to reserve it entirely for a Muslim-only celebration of Eid al-Adha.
That plan is now dead.
A water park spokesperson confirmed the cancellation in a written statement. “After further review and in the best interest of the City of Grand Prairie, the June 1 EID event at Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark has been canceled,” the statement read.
The event, marketed as the third annual “DFW Epic Eid,” initially circulated online through promotional materials that described it in unambiguous terms. The flyers read “MUSLIM ONLY EVENT,” “FOR MUSLIMS ONLY,” and “CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC – MUSLIMS ONLY.”
Word spread fast. Abbott moved faster.
The governor took to X with a pointed message directed at Grand Prairie’s city leadership. “A city-owned water park in Grand Prairie openly advertised a ‘MUSLIMS ONLY’ event — closed to the general public,” Abbott wrote. “That’s religious discrimination. It’s unconstitutional.”
Abbott did not stop at rhetoric. His Public Safety Office dispatched a formal letter to Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen, placing the city officially on notice.
The letter, dated May 6, directly notified Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen that the city was in breach of all Public Safety Office grant agreements for fiscal year 2026.
The financial stakes were substantial. The governor’s Public Safety Office cited five active grants from the state to Grand Prairie totaling approximately $530,000.
Abbott pointed to a law already on the books as the legal backbone for his demand. “I signed HB 4211 into law — banning Muslim only no-go zones in Texas,” he wrote on X. “The City must cancel the event and commit to never allowing something like it again by May 11th, or lose $530,000 in state grants.”
The governor also sent a broader message to city and municipal leaders statewide. “Let this be a lesson to local officials: Facilities funded by ALL taxpayers are not just for a subset of Texans,” Abbott wrote.
As pressure mounted, event organizers moved to update the promotional language.
Updated material replaced “Muslim only” wording with “all are welcome” while maintaining a “modest dress only” policy. But the state argued the underlying event still appeared religiously exclusive.
The governor’s office was not persuaded by the rewording.
As of the morning of May 6, the website still indicated that “the entire waterpark has been exclusively reserved for Muslims” and that “attendees of all ages are expected to dress in accordance with Islamic values.”
The state’s letter also presented a pointed constitutional comparison.
“An event at a city-owned pool that was publicly and indiscriminately advertised as ‘Whites only’ would surely violate the Constitution,” the letter stated. “The same must be true here.”
Grand Prairie’s deadline was May 11. The city did not wait that long.
The cancellation arrived before the clock ran out, sparing the city from an immediate loss of state funding — but not from the national attention the episode generated.
