Over the last four years Governor Katie Hobbs, the teachers’ unions, and their allies in the corporate media have been relentlessly attacking Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) program, the most popular and successful school choice program in the country. Over 106,000 kids are currently using an ESA scholarship, with thousands more signing up each year.
Their most recent assault began last March, when the unions filed their ballot initiative in an attempt to gut ESAs. If passed, over 30,000 kids would have immediately lost their ESA scholarship or had their scholarship funds revoked because of the new restrictions. Another 400,000 children would have been permanently barred from participation in the program. The National Education Association (NEA) poured $7 million into this fight, hiring an army of paid circulators that were willing to say, and sometimes do, just about anything for a paycheck.
Interestingly, there were two different responses to this most recent threat. The response from most of Arizona’s school choice organizations and ESA families was a full-throated defense of the program. Within days, the AZ school choice coalition launched a countercampaign and made clear that ESAs would not go undefended. They fundraised, developed messaging, deployed grassroots “decline to sign” efforts, and crafted legislative countermeasures to put the unions on their heels.
And after the initiative was filed with the Secretary of State in July, a petition review was launched by the Goldwater Institute, which our organization helped support. That petition review revealed that thousands of signatures were either invalid or unlawfully collected by convicted felons. The result was that we proved in court that the NEA and Save our Schools was short of qualifying by nearly 15,000 signatures, and we knocked them off the ballot.
It was a pivotal victory in a long line of big wins for school choice in Arizona.
However, during this battle against the radical left, an alternative response to this attack emerged from the shadows: a belief that the only way to save the ESA program was to enact punitive regulations on the families that use the program. Rather than fighting back against the false attacks being levied against ESAs by the unions and the media, they preferred to make concessions that would make the program politically “attack-proof” in the future.
Sadly, this strategy has been tried in the past when dealing with the unions, and it almost resulted in irreversible disaster for our state.
Conceding the Issue to the Left Is the Quickest Way to Defeat
Our organization has seen this coordinated attack from the left before. Different issues, different talking points, but the same trajectory that involves goading us into accepting the other side’s terms of surrender…
The Protect Education Act is projected to fall more than 10,000 valid signatures short of the number required to qualify for Arizona’s November ballot after a court challenge removed thousands of petition signatures and county recorders completed their validity reviews.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AFEC) announced Monday that applying the trial court’s rulings and county signature-validity rates leaves the initiative with approximately 245,000 valid signatures. Arizona law required the campaign to produce 255,949 valid signatures.
The calculation follows an expedited ruling Thursday from Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David McDowell in Clark v. Fontes, the lawsuit challenging the petitions submitted by Protect Education, Accountability Now, the political committee behind the initiative.
At the time of McDowell’s ruling, the final outcome remained unresolved because Maricopa and Apache counties had not yet completed their reviews. The Arizona Capitol Timesreported that the Secretary of State’s initial review had reduced the campaign’s submitted total to 389,376 signatures before the court considered challenges to individual circulators, petition sheets, and duplicate signatures.
🚨 BREAKING: “PROTECT EDUCATION ACT” FALLS SHORT
Based on the trial court’s ruling in Clark (@ClarkRimsza) v Fontes and county signature validity rates, the union-backed anti-ESA initiative does not have enough valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
McDowell’s ruling left 348,269 signatures presumptively valid before application of the counties’ random-sample validity rates. The court also addressed 24,369 duplicate signatures and challenges involving more than 110 petition circulators.
“The court agrees that it is conceivable that a double count could occur, but the court cannot make a decision based upon a hypothetical double counting of duplicate signatures,” McDowell wrote.
The initiative’s supporters submitted 421,451 signatures on July 2. Save Our Schools Arizona and the Arizona Education Association were among the organizations backing the campaign.
The Goldwater Institute filed its challenge July 20, alleging that tens of thousands of the submitted signatures should be rejected because of duplicate entries, defects in circulator registrations, and petitions collected by people who were legally ineligible to circulate them.
The amended complaint raised more than 73,300 objections. Those included allegations involving unregistered paid circulators, signatures collected before circulator registration, inaccurate addresses or contact information, identification problems, and circulators whose felony convictions or other legal circumstances allegedly made them ineligible.
McDowell ultimately invalidated signatures collected by several circulators. Four circulators were disqualified because of criminal histories. The judge also invalidated several thousand signatures collected by circulator Tyrone Crispell after finding his denial that he misrepresented the initiative to prospective signers was not credible.
AFEC said Monday that nearly 70,000 signatures were disqualified through the challenge, including duplicates and signatures gathered by legally ineligible circulators.
“This is a major victory for Arizona parents, students, and the integrity of our elections,” AFEC President Scot Mussi said. “This anti-school choice initiative and its union backers spent more than $7 million dollars trying to dismantle school choice in our state, but they still could not collect enough lawful, valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.”
Campaign-finance figures compiled by Transparency USA from Arizona disclosure records show the Protect Education, Accountability Now committee had reported more than $7.5 million in total expenditures through July 30. The National Education Association accounted for approximately $6.57 million in cash and in-kind contributions, while the Arizona Education Association contributed another $810,000.
The Protect Education Act, designated Proposition 212 during the ballot-review process, would make several changes to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. The measure would generally limit eligibility to families earning $150,000 or less, with exceptions including students with disabilities, certain military families, and students assigned to poorly performing public schools.
The proposal would also establish additional requirements for participating private schools and tutors, restrict certain ESA expenditures, and generally require unused annual ESA funds to be returned to the state.
The signature dispute is separate from litigation over how Proposition 212 would be described to voters. Last week, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Julie Ann Mata ordered Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to rewrite portions of the proposition’s descriptive title and “yes” and “no” statements after finding that the existing language omitted significant provisions of the measure. Judge Daniel Martin separately ordered revisions to the Arizona Legislative Council’s publicity-pamphlet analysis.
The teachers’ unions and their allies at Save Our Schools (SOS) have proven time and time again that they will do anything to kill universal school choice in Arizona.
They’ve fought expansion of the program. They’ve pushed to cap it. They’ve worked with activist reporters in the legacy media with ties to the Red for Ed teachers’ union to push false claims about it. And we all witnessed it four years ago when they made their not-so-triumphant proclamation that they had enough signatures to repeal the program—only to discover they had miscounted by more than 50,000 signatures.
But their latest attempt to overturn the program is their lowest yet.
Earlier this month, the teachers’ unions and SOS announced they had submitted more than 420,000 signatures for a ballot initiative that would end the universal eligibility of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) program.
Given their track record, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club worked closely with the Goldwater Institute and other school choice advocates to review the petitions. What we found was far more disturbing than another failed signature count.
Dozens of Convicted Felons—Including Registered Sex Offenders—Hired to Collect Signatures
The teachers’ unions and SOS want Arizonans to believe that their “Protect Education Act” campaign is a grassroots effort led by concerned parents and educators. But they made a very different choice when it came time to build their campaign…
A ballot initiative to end the state’s universal school choice program is facing a new challenge to the validity of its signatures.
The Goldwater Institute filed the challenge in court on Monday.
The Arizona Free Enterprise Club (AZFEC) also announced that it joined Goldwater’s legal challenge, with AZFEC Vice President of Policy Greg Blackie serving as a plaintiff in the case. According to AZFEC, it worked alongside Goldwater and other school choice advocates to review petition sheets, identify alleged irregularities, and help ensure Arizona’s ballot qualification laws are enforced.
The Goldwater Institute said “a large amount” of the more than 415,000 signatures submitted appeared to be “fallacious.” The initiative needs about 256,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. The complaint raised more than 73,300 objections; the complaint asserted that, with all signatures removed as a result of the objections, the ballot initiative would be left with fewer than 256,000 valid signatures.
The 900-page complaint filed in the Maricopa County Superior Court stated that the signatures weren’t properly registered with the secretary of state’s office as required by law.
Specifically, the complaint raised objections including paid but unregistered circulators, signatures gathered prior to circulator registration, false residential addresses, permanent address contradictions, bad telephone numbers or email addresses, false identities, bad service addresses, and ineligible, missing, or mismatched IDs.
Additionally, the Goldwater Institute claimed that certain circulators were ineligible to collect signatures because they had been convicted of a criminal offense involving fraud, forgery, or identity theft; convicted of another felony offense in which their civil rights haven’t been restored; or adjudicated an incapacitated person.
Individuals named as ineligible circulators were convicted of felonies and other crimes related to drugs, human trafficking, manslaughter, sexual abuse of a minor, assault, kidnapping, weapons misconduct, forgery, false reporting, and credit card forgery.
Finally, the complaint claimed that certain circulators failed to write their full and correct assigned circulator identification number on multiple petition sheets.
Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi said the allegations raised questions about the campaign’s vetting and oversight of paid petition circulators.
“Save Our Schools and the teachers unions have spent years accusing ESA families of fraud and demanding greater scrutiny of parents. Now, their own campaign is facing serious questions about the people they hired to gather signatures,” said Mussi. “Arizona’s election laws must be fully enforced. If this campaign failed to collect enough lawful and valid signatures, it must not qualify for the ballot.”
Goldwater Institute CEO and President Victor Riches criticized the initiative for its heavy sourcing of out-of-state special interest funding.
“This is a shameless attack on Arizona’s parents, funded by an out-of-state union,” said Riches. “They’re trying to game the system by turning in tens of thousands of invalid signatures in an effort to destroy the most successful school choice program in the country. This won’t happen on our watch.”
The Goldwater Institute also stated in a press release that the original title of the initiative was misleading.
If enough signatures are validated and voters approve the measure, the Protect Education Act would impose an income eligibility cap on the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program.
Doug Ducey, former Arizona governor, was quoted in the Goldwater Institute press release saying the entire effort to dismantle the ESA program proved the true intentions of teachers’ unions. Ducey signed the bill into law that made the ESA program open to all students.
“Once again, we are reminded how little these out of state unions care about Arizona students and their parents,” said Ducey. “This measure would strip tens of thousands of Arizona families of educational choices they have made for their children, forcing students out of the schools that are serving them well and back into schools they chose to leave. That is unacceptable, and we will vigorously challenge this measure at every possible step.”
In response to the submission of the ballot initiative signatures earlier this month, Ducey launched a political action committee to secure school choice accessibility for military families.
Protect Education, Accountability Now (PEAN), the organization behind the ballot initiative, filed a challenge last week to the competing legislature-referred ballot initiative that would negate their proposed ballot initiative.
The Goldwater Institute has filed a motion in Maricopa County Superior Court seeking to intervene on behalf of two Air Force veterans in a lawsuit challenging a proposed constitutional amendment that would protect certain scholarship funds for children of military families.
The motion was filed on behalf of Nickolas Kupper and Robert Figueroa, whom Goldwater identified as Air Force veterans whose children currently participate in Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program. The proposed intervenors are seeking to defend House Concurrent Resolution 2048, the “Military Families College Savings and Scholarship Protection Act,” which the Legislature recently referred to the November 2026 ballot.
The lawsuit was filed by the Protect Education Accountability Now Committee, Save Our Schools Arizona, and voter Linda May Lyon against the State of Arizona and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. According to Goldwater’s motion to intervene, the plaintiffs are asking the court to block HCR 2048 from appearing on the November ballot.
Arizona's military families don't deserve to have their children's educational opportunities ripped from their hands. That's why we're stepping up to defend them. https://t.co/ayRcX5JbBE
— Goldwater Institute (@GoldwaterInst) July 2, 2026
Goldwater said in a July 2 announcement that Kupper and Figueroa are seeking to defend the measure because their families have used ESA funds for years and have a direct interest in the outcome of the litigation.
“Proposed Intervenors seek to intervene as Defendants to defend the constitutionality of House Concurrent Resolution 2048 (‘HCR 2048’), the ‘Military Families College Savings and Scholarship Protection Act,’ which is a legislative referral passed to protect the educational stability of military families,” the motion states.
HCR 2048 proposes adding a new section to Article XI of the Arizona Constitution. Under the measure, the state could not confiscate funds from the scholarship account of a child of a military family if the account is maintained under a state program that designates such students as eligible and allows the funds to be used for tuition or fees at eligible postsecondary institutions.
The measure defines a “child of a military family” as a student who is the child of a person serving on active duty in the U.S. armed forces, who was serving on active duty when the student’s eligibility was initially determined, or who was killed in the line of duty.
The proposed amendment also contains a nonseverability provision. If a future law or voter-approved measure violates the military-family scholarship protection, the entire conflicting law or measure would be void, and a court could not sever only the offending portion.
The House passed HCR 2048 initially on March 2, the Senate passed it on June 12 by a 16-13-1 vote, and the House passed the final reading on June 13 by a 31-22-7 vote.
Goldwater’s motion argues that Kupper and Figueroa have a right to intervene because the lawsuit directly threatens their ability to secure long-term constitutional protections for their children’s education funding.
“By seeking to keep HCR 2048 off the ballot, Plaintiffs directly threaten to block Proposed Intervenors’ ability to secure long-term constitutional protections for their children’s educational funding,” the motion states.
The filing also argues that the existing government defendants cannot adequately represent the families’ specific interests. Goldwater said Fontes is defending the measure as a neutral election administrator, while Kupper and Figueroa are defending the substantive validity of the proposed amendment because their children rely on ESA funds.
In its July 2 statement, the Goldwater Institute said, “The Arizona Constitution is clear: Arizona voters have the right to amend the state constitution, and the Military Families Protection Act would trump the activists’ efforts to cripple the scholarship opportunities currently afforded to Arizona military families and others.”
The lawsuit comes as ESA opponents are also seeking to place the Protect Education Act on the ballot. Save Our Schools Arizona says the proposal is intended to “reform Arizona’s universal ESA voucher program” and increase transparency and accountability.
The Protect Education Campaign announced last week that it submitted 421,451 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office.
The Protect Education Act proposal would require unused ESA money to revert to the state and be directed to public schools, and it would bar families making more than $150,000 annually from joining the program. It would also ban ESA spending on non-educational or luxury items and require the Arizona Department of Education to report how much voucher funding each school receives.
HCR 2048 could conflict with the Protect Education Act because the proposed constitutional amendment would block future laws or ballot measures from changing the protected scholarship-account funds for military families.
Goldwater argued in its motion that the litigation is directly tied to that conflict, saying an adverse ruling could remove HCR 2048 from the ballot and leave the families’ ESA accounts vulnerable to “regulatory and financial rollbacks” under the competing Protect Education Act.
“Without HCR 2048, Proposed Intervenors’ educational accounts will remain highly vulnerable to systemic legislative and political volatility, including the exact regulatory and financial rollbacks slated under Plaintiffs’ competing ‘Protect Education Act,’” the motion states.
Kupper and Figueroa are asking the court to allow them to enter the case as defendants, either as a matter of right or by permission. They also said they intend to file a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claim rather than expand the litigation with counterclaims.
The case is assigned to Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Kreamer.
