Texas's highest court rejected a Pakistani talaq divorce obtained without the wife's knowledge, ruling foreign Sharia judgments get no comity when they violate constitutional notice rights.
The Texas Supreme Court stepped into a long-running Houston divorce fight and drew a bright line: a Pakistani judgment ending a marriage through Islamic talaq is not enforceable in Texas when the wife received no notice, no service, and no chance to be heard.
In the Harris County case of Mohammad Ali Choudhri and Hira Azhar, the court reversed a trial ruling that had given the foreign divorce comity and sent the matter back for further proceedings. Comity is the practice of one court respecting the laws and judgments of another jurisdiction, including foreign ones. The high court held that practice stops when a foreign proceeding tramples basic due-process guarantees.
Reporting on the ruling describes how the justices refused to treat the Pakistani divorce as binding in Texas because it contradicted the principle of natural justice, the requirement that a person get notice of a suit before being conclusively bound by its result.
Choudhri, a Pakistani national living in Houston, traveled to Pakistan in 2008 for an arranged marriage to Azhar. He was 28. She was 18.
Azhar obtained a visa and came to Houston in 2010. In 2012 she returned to Pakistan to renew that visa. In 2013, Choudhri traveled to Pakistan and divorced her through talaq, a Sharia process in which a husband can end the marriage by stating the divorce, including by saying it three times.
Pakistani courts and the Harris County trial court later acknowledged he used talaq in 2013. The Texas Supreme Court zeroed in on what happened next for Azhar.
The court stated the divorce moved forward “without her knowledge or consent... His wife was not served with process. She was not heard. She received no notice at all until two years after the divorce was final.”
That gap, a finished foreign divorce and two years of silence, drove the Texas ruling.
Texas justices treated notice as non-negotiable. They wrote that the law “requires a person to have notice of a suit before he can be conclusively bound by its result.”
On that foundation, the court was blunt about the Pakistani judgment.
Before quoting the holding, the opinion made the standard plain: foreign judgments that defy Texas and U.S. constitutional guarantees do not get a free pass under comity.
"The Pakistani divorce judgment was issued contrary to these principles. Accordingly, it cannot be afforded comity. We reverse and remand to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."
The court went further, rejecting any notion that Texas must rubber-stamp overseas results that skip basic fairness.
"Other countries are welcome to conclude otherwise, but their judgments are not entitled to comity in a Texas court. No foreign judgment is entitled to comity when it contradicts the fundamental guarantees of the Texas and United States Constitutions. For the reasons set out above, the Pakistani proceeding challenged here exemplifies the type of foreign judgment that Texas courts may not enforce."
The opinion also pointed back to an 1895 U.S. Supreme Court rule on comity: no sovereign is ever required to recognize a foreign sovereign’s judgment, and comity “is neither a matter of absolute obligation, on the one hand nor of mere courtesy and good will, upon the other.”
Explanatory material from the Islamic Sharia Council in London, cited in coverage of the case, outlines the husband’s power and the waiting rules that follow.
The council’s description says “he may divorce her either verbally or in writing, known as Talaq,” under conditions that include timing around menses and the absence of sexual contact since the last menses. After talaq, “his wife must wait for a given period of 3 months or 3 menstrual cycles. During this period, the wife is allowed to stay in the same house and the husband is responsible for her welfare and maintenance.”
Whatever those religious procedures require in another country, the Texas Supreme Court held they cannot erase the American requirement of actual notice before a judgment binds someone here.
Azhar challenged the divorce in Pakistan and in Harris County in 2015. Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled against her in 2018, stating the couple had been divorced through talaq in 2013.
In Texas, the Harris County trial court dismissed her divorce petition and granted comity to the Pakistani judgment. She appealed. The Texas Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Coverage notes the high court acted eleven years after Azhar filed for divorce in Texas. She had sued before a later Texas rule on foreign-law judgments took effect, yet the justices still took the appeal and rejected comity on constitutional notice grounds.
The legislature was not silent while this dispute wound through the courts. In 2017 it enacted HB 45, directing the Texas Supreme Court to adopt rules and provide judicial instruction on the application of foreign laws in certain family-law cases.
Rule 308b followed and took effect in 2018. It requires hearings to decide whether a judgment or arbitration award based on foreign law is enforceable in specified suits under the Texas family code.
Those measures did not invent the notice principle. They gave trial courts a clearer process for testing foreign family judgments against Texas standards. The Choudhri-Azhar appeal showed why that testing matters: a spouse can lose marital status abroad without ever being told the case exists.
The ruling lands amid a broader Texas effort to keep Sharia from governing family outcomes in state courts. Republican members of Congress from Texas, Chip Roy and Keith Self, launched a Sharia Free America Caucus and filed multiple bills. Sen. John Cornyn filed measures including the Defeat Sharia Law in America Act and the No Sharia Act.
Gov. Greg Abbott has taken multiple actions aimed at blocking Sharia’s reach, including an investigation into a Sharia tribunal in north Texas. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick listed banning Sharia law in Texas as a top legislative priority. Texas House Republicans created a Sharia Free Caucus.
In March, 95% of Republican primary voters backed a measure to ban Sharia law in Texas. Separately, the Trump administration has prioritized identifying visa and marriage fraud, a backdrop often raised when international marriages and quick foreign divorces collide with U.S. residency.
The Texas Supreme Court did not need campaign rhetoric to decide this case. It applied a simple constitutional rule: no notice, no binding judgment in a Texas court.
By denying comity and reversing, the high court stripped the Pakistani talaq judgment of automatic force in Harris County. The trial court must now proceed without treating that foreign divorce as the last word.
For Azhar, the decision reopens a path that the trial court had closed. For Choudhri, it means a divorce perfected under Pakistani procedure does not, by itself, end the Texas case. For every other couple whose marriage crosses borders, the message is clearer still: Texas will not enforce a foreign family judgment that skips the hearing and the summons American law demands.
Due process is not a courtesy Texas extends only when other countries agree. When a foreign court erases a spouse’s rights in the dark, Texas courts are right to say no.
