Wyoming lawmakers forewarned of school voucher lawsuit as they debated program’s constitutionality

Wyoming’s new universal school voucher program spurred intense debate during the 2025 Legislature, and a major sticking point among lawmakers and education officials was a belief that it violates the state’s constitution. 

“It’s clear as day that this bill is unconstitutional,” Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, said during House floor debate. “We as a state will clearly lose when we are inevitably sued.”

Litigation seemed all but certain. Even those in favor of passing a law to give state funds to students for private or homeschool costs welcomed a court challenge. 

“There’s good constitutional arguments on both sides, and we’re only going to find out by trying it with a real-life case and seeing what the Wyoming courts will say,” Casper Republican Sen. Charlie Scott said during another debate. 

Those predictions became reality Friday, when Wyoming parents and the Wyoming Education Association filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act. 

The lawsuit asks the court to block the new universal voucher program, which roughly 3,800 students have applied for since the application opened on May 15. By doing so, it threatens to unravel a years-long effort to expand school choice in the state. 

That outcome also was forewarned during the session. Advocates of the state’s 2024 education savings account — an early iteration of the voucher program that was not universal but instead based on income qualifications — said expanding it too fast could result in the entire program getting scrapped.

“You gotta learn to walk before you run,” Rep. Cody Wiley, R-Rock Springs, a 2024 education savings account proponent, said during debate. Without a judicious process, he said, “we could kill this whole effort before it even gets off the ground.” 

A controversial expansion

The Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act represents a significant expansion of school choice in the state, offering families $7,000 per child annually for K-12 non-public-school costs like tuition or tutoring. The scholarship also offers money for pre-K costs, but only to income-qualified families at or below 250% of the federal poverty level.

It comes as a school-choice movement mounts nationwide, particularly among conservatives. 

Rep. Ocean Andrew, R-Laramie, who sponsored and championed the Steamboat Scholarship bill, called the state’s 2024 ESA program much too narrow. His 2025 bill, in its original form, made the program universal and dropped the preschool component, statewide assessments or similar nationwide tests for students and a requirement that providers be certified by the Department of Education. 

The bill ignited one of the hottest debates of the recent session. It sparked a deluge of constituent feedback, according to lawmakers, both from supporters of school choice and from critics who called the measure an unconstitutional bill that will erode the quality of public education in the state. 

Lawmakers transformed it before it passed out of the Legislature; they brought 26 amendments, including 11 that passed. The final version reinstated the assessment requirements, the provider certification and the inclusion of pre-K, though families have to show income need to qualify for that portion. 

Many also urged the body to hold off and allow the existing ESA program to roll out and work out any bugs before changing it so drastically. Lawmakers asked what the rush was, given that Wyoming’s existing ESA program was only two months old. 

“I’m not quite sure why on this issue the Wyoming Senate feels the urgency to have the accelerator all the way to the floor, with no guardrails, going 100 miles an hour,” Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, said on the Senate floor. “That’s what it feels like we’re doing here.” 

In addition, lawmakers and others repeatedly questioned the constitutionality of the expanded program.

Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, was perhaps the most strident voice against the measure, which he asserted runs counter to the Wyoming Constitution. In particular, Article 7, Section 8, which reads: “Nor shall any portion of any public school fund ever be used to support or assist any private school, or any school, academy, seminary, college or other institution of learning controlled by any church or sectarian organization or religious denomination whatsoever.”

Rothfuss and others, like Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, warned that its passage would be an invitation for the state to spend a great deal of resources in court. 

“We’re going to blow the ESA bill up for something that’s going to spend a lot of time in our third branch of government, and rightfully so,” Harshman said in reference to the courts.

Education is ‘paramount’ 

Nine parents of school-aged children and the Wyoming Education Association, which represents more than 6,000 of the state’s public school employees, filed the lawsuit Friday. Parents reside in counties across the state. Many have children who receive special education services through public school or are queer or non-binary.

The lawsuit argues the voucher program violates the Wyoming Constitution, which makes public education a paramount state commitment. The constitution’s education clause states, “the legislature shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a complete and uniform system of public instruction.”

A previous Wyoming Supreme Court ruling on education funding “found that ‘education is a fundamental right’ in Wyoming, that ‘all aspects of the school finance system are subject to strict scrutiny,’ and that ‘any state action interfering with [the right to equal educational opportunity] must be closely examined before it can be said to pass constitutional muster,’” the lawsuit reads.

This voucher program, it asserts, does not pass that muster. That’s because “the state cannot circumvent those requirements by funding private education that is not uniform and that meets none of the required state constitutional standards for education.”

In addition, the program is unconstitutional because it violates constitutional language that allows the state to give public funds only for the necessary support of the poor, the lawsuit reads. Instead, it’s an example of “gratuitously funneling public funds to private individuals and entities, regardless of whether they are poor and regardless of whether that support is necessary.” 

Parents who signed onto the case oppose the voucher plan due to the harmful impact it will have on their children, according to the lawsuit, “because private schools receiving voucher funding can refuse admission to children with disabilities … and are not required to provide special education services or comply with [individualized education programs].” They are also concerned that private schools can refuse to admit and educate children who identify as queer, transgender or non-binary.

The voucher program will also negatively impact funding at public schools the parents’ children attend, the lawsuit says. “As students leave the public school system using public funds provided through the Voucher Program, the public schools will lose funding under the Average Daily Member (‘ADM’) formula, thereby resulting in fewer resources available to educate and support the students remaining in public schools like [their] children. As long-time parents, teachers and educators, Plaintiffs have seen the impact of inadequate funding for public schools, which will only be exacerbated by a further loss of funding.”

The Wyoming Legislature has established standards and oversight concerning the nature and quality of education that Wyoming students receive in public schools. But there is no mechanism to authorize Wyoming’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder to ensure those same standards and quality are furnished through the voucher program, the lawsuit states.

“Despite charging the Superintendent with administering the Program, the statute explicitly deprives her of any authority to ensure students utilizing the program receive a quality education,” the lawsuit reads. “In effect, the Program is a black box: funds will go in, but except in isolated instances the state and the public will have no way to know what is coming out.”

Nothing in the statute, the lawsuit concludes, “prevents instruction from being perfunctory, or worse.”

What’s next

Applications for universal vouchers opened in May, and the Wyoming Department of Education intends to begin depositing voucher payments to registered families on July 1. Some 3,817 student applications had been submitted by Monday. 

Plaintiffs requested a preliminary injunction in this case. That would essentially halt the voucher program immediately while the court reaches a final decision. 

If that happens, it poses major questions about the fate of those 3,817 students. 

Outside of the lawsuit, issues have emerged over several aspects of the program due to legal ambiguity, according to WDE. Those include questions over the right of ESA students to participate in middle/junior high school activities, age eligibility and notification to school districts. Degenfelder plans to work with the Legislature to clarify those areas, according to the department. 

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a significant court decision that resulted from another Wyoming Education Association lawsuit. The association filed suit in 2022 alleging the state violated its constitution by failing to adequately fund public schools and has withheld appropriate funding at the expense of educational excellence, safety and security. Eight school districts joined the lawsuit as intervenors to challenge the state.

Laramie County District Court Judge Peter Froelicher ruled in favor of plaintiffs in February and ordered the Legislature to fix a funding formula he determined to be impacting Wyoming children’s right to a proper education. 

Superintendent of Public Instruction Degenfelder accused the WEA of “left wing lawfare” in a Tuesday statement to WyoFile. Degenfelder was not surprised by Friday’s lawsuit, she said, but called the timing “deeply” troubling.

“To wait until two weeks before the [ESA] funds are to begin distribution to ask for an injunction is devastating to the nearly 4,000 Wyoming families that have signed up for the program and the many service providers that are counting on those families,” Degenfelder said. “This is reckless and our Wyoming children are the collateral damage.”