Arizona lawmakers have passed a groundbreaking bill that will provide students access to schools of their choosing from kindergarten through high school — another win for school choice advocates.
With the new 2011 Empowerment Scholarships Account (ESA) program, every household in the Grand Canyon region will be granted $6,500 annually per child for private, homeschooled, or learning pods. It was started by Goldwater more than ten years ago.
Tuition assistance has become more common around the country in recent years as a result of COVID shutdowns and health restrictions.
The ESA program also ensures that all students in Arizona, regardless of whether they attended a public, private, or home school, will have the chance to enroll in the system and earn their fair share of state funds to pursue any educational opportunities of their choosing.
In his state address earlier this year, Gov. Doug Ducey urged lawmakers to “dream big” for Arizona families when it comes to their kids’ lives.
“Let’s increase school choice this session in whatever manner we can,” Ducey stated. “I’ll sign the bills if you send them to me.”
This comes after the Supreme Court recently ruled that Maine’s tuition assistance program must cover religious schools, arguing that its initial terms violated the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment.
“Maine has enacted a program of tuition assistance for parents who live in school districts that do not operate a secondary school of their own. Under the program, parents designate the secondary school they would like their child to attend—public or private—and the school district transmits payments to that school to help defray the costs of tuition. Most private schools are eligible to receive the payments, so long as they are ‘nonsectarian,’” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.
“The question presented is whether this restriction violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” he added.
The majority opinion stated that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protects individuals from “indirect coercion or penalties on the free exercise of religion, not just outright prohibitions.”
“A State’s [anti-establishment] interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise,” read the opinion.
