The fate of Utah’s school voucher program will remain undecided until at least January, a judge concluded Thursday after hearing arguments about whether or not the roughly $80 million Utah Fits All scholarship is considered constitutional.
Third District Judge Laura Scott opted not to rule from the bench on a lawsuit challenging the largest school voucher program in state history after hearing nearly three hours of testimony.
The state’s largest teachers union first sued in May, alleging that the program was unconstitutional. The Utah Education Association’s complaint came more than a year after Republican lawmakers in 2023 pushed a controversial bill file through in just 10 days to create it.
At passage, the bill allocated $42.5 million to support vouchers for 5,000 students. Lawmakers nearly doubled the price tag this year to accommodate about 5,000 more students.
The lawsuit named as defendants Gov. Spencer Cox, attorney general Sean Reyes and the Alliance for Choice in Education (”ACE”), an organization hired by the Utah State Board of Education to manage the program — which ACE refers to as an “education savings account” program — and its application process.
Families began receiving scholarships this year, which they can use to send their kids to private school, homeschool them, or pay for a wide range of educational-adjacent expenses, like piano lessons or ballet.
The maximum scholarship available — $8,000 — is nearly double what a student is traditionally designated in Utah’s public school system, under what’s called the weighted pupil unit. That number is currently set at roughly $4,400 per child.
The UEA asserts in its complaint that the voucher program violates multiple provisions of the Utah Constitution, which requires the state to establish a free education system that’s equally accessible to every child.
Creating a publicly funded voucher program — where taxpayer dollars can help fund private school tuitions, but likely won’t cover the entire cost of tuition — means the system supported by Utah is now no longer free, the union argues.
The UEA also argues that the program diverts income tax revenue toward potentially paying for private education expenses. That tax revenue is currently reserved for only three purposes: public education, higher education and services for children and individuals with disabilities.
In July, attorneys for Cox and Reyes filed court papers to throw out the lawsuit, arguing that the voucher program “is not an education system” and that the Utah Legislature acted within its constitutional authority to use public money to “support children.”
On Thursday, both sides defended their arguments in front of Scott, who questioned whether to rely on a narrow reading of the Utah constitution and its relevant voter-approved amendments — or instead, the plaintiff’s exhibits, which reflected how Utah voters from the 1980s or early aughts thought about how those amendments could apply.
In other words, could she consider whether Utah voters knew how education funding may change over time when they approved the constitutional amendments in 1986 and 2006? Or should she rely on the plain language of the constitution that allows lawmakers to fund programs using income tax revenue to “support children.”
Scott Ryther, with the attorney general’s office and representing the state, said “the phrase to support children” is not ambiguous. It is “somewhat broad,” he said, but it’s clear.
He preferred that Scott rely on the Utah constitution for her ruling, although he argued even if she used the plaintiff’s exhibits, she’d come to the same conclusion.
Scott also asked multiple times about the longer term repercussions of the state’s interpretation of the constitution, which the state argues allows the voucher program. Would it allow the Legislature to create a parallel, shadow school system, using public dollars, so long as they maintained their constitutional responsibilities to also fund a public education system that is free and open to all?
Attorneys for the defendants agreed the Legislature could, but they also said that wasn’t the issue before the court — a point Ramya Ravindran, the plaintiff’s attorney, also agreed with.
“It’s not about what may happen in the future,” she said. “It is about what was enacted in this statute.”
Scott ultimately decided she needed more time to make a decision, and ended the court hearing just before 4:30 p.m., promising to rule within 60 days.
Months before Scott heard the lawsuit’s arguments Thursday, lawmakers proposed a separate controversial wrinkle to Utah’s public education system: the ill-fated constitutional Amendment A.
Voters ultimately did not get to weigh in on the amendment, which was voided in court ahead of the general election. However, the amendment would have changed how lawmakers can spend the state’s income tax revenue, letting them use funds on a broader range of unspecified “state needs” — such as the voucher program.
In September, the union filed a supplement to its lawsuit and asked to throw out Amendment A.
The Utah Supreme Court ultimately got rid of the proposed amendment on a technicality — the ballot language did not appear in newspapers statewide for at least two months prior to appearing on the ballot, as required by state law.
