Arizona’s $1 Billion Voucher Program Settles Two-Year Accountability Fight
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes settled a lawsuit on July 1, 2026, that will shape how the state’s $1 billion school voucher program polices spending. Under the agreement, parents using the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program no longer have to prove that supplemental educational materials are required by a specific curriculum their child is studying.
The settlement ends a dispute that started in July 2024, when Mayes directed the ESA program director to require proof that supplemental purchases were curriculum-necessary. The conservative Goldwater Institute quickly filed suit on behalf of two ESA parents to block that requirement. Two years of litigation later, the documentation standard Mayes sought is gone.
“The Attorney General approved this settlement agreement to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on this lawsuit which was coordinated by the Goldwater Institute and the Arizona Department of Education with the goal of getting a court to bless their view that ESA holders should be able to buy anything they want with taxpayer dollars.”
Richie Taylor, Spokesman for AG Kris Mayes, July 7, 2026
What parents do have to do now is sign an attestation stating that purchased materials will be used for their ESA student and not for any other purpose. They must also tell the Arizona Department of Education what curriculum those materials will support. Providing false information or falsifying documents can result in account suspension or termination.
The ESA program is large and growing. Created in 2012 to serve students with disabilities, it expanded in 2022 under then-Gov. Doug Ducey to cover all K-12 students in Arizona. Enrollment has grown from roughly 12,000 before that expansion to more than 100,000 students today.
100,000+ students enrolled in Arizona’s ESA program, which costs taxpayers approximately $1 billion per year
That scale makes accountability rules consequential. The program works by issuing parents a debit card or reimbursing purchases directly, and also allows buying through the ClassWallet virtual marketplace. Critics have long argued the debit-card model makes it difficult to verify that public funds are spent on legitimate educational purposes.
The Goldwater Institute called the settlement a victory, saying Mayes had “waved the white flag, ending her illegal effort to use bureaucratic red tape to gum up families’ Empowerment Scholarship Account purchases.” The Institute’s framing positions any documentation requirement as government overreach. Mayes’s office characterized the lawsuit itself as a coordinated effort to minimize oversight of public funds.
The attestation model now in place puts the legal burden on parents to self-certify appropriate use, with account termination as the main enforcement tool.
What You Can Do Now
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Call the Arizona Department of Education at (602) 542-5393 and ask what audit process will verify that attestations are accurate and that ESA funds are spent on legitimate educational materials. The settlement requires future oversight measures but leaves the details unspecified.
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Contact your Arizona state legislators through the Arizona Legislature’s member directory at azleg.gov/find-my-legislator and ask them to pass independent audit requirements for ESA spending. With $1 billion in annual public funds at stake, self-attestation alone is not a financial controls standard used anywhere else in state government.
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Submit a public records request to the Arizona Department of Education for ESA purchase data by emailing [email protected]. Independent review of spending patterns is one of the few tools available to assess whether the attestation system is working.
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Contact your county school superintendent and ask whether ESA enrollment growth in your district has affected public school funding or resource allocation. Arizona’s universal expansion diverts per-pupil funding from public schools to ESA accounts.
Sources
Arizona Mirror: Mayes Settles Voucher Lawsuit Over Documentation Requirements
Arizona Department of Education: Empowerment Scholarship Account Program Overview
Arizona Legislature: ESA Universal Expansion, 2022 Session
Goldwater Institute: ESA Litigation Page and Settlement Statement