With lawsuit pending, Wyoming school choice program’s durability remains in question

Nikki and Travis Leck signed their sons up for Wyoming’s new Steamboat Legacy Scholarship account this summer so they could receive tuition assistance for a private classical school in Cody.

With the universal school choice program’s turbulent start-and-stop rollout and a court decision still pending, Leck is aware that the financial boost might not last forever. 

“I haven’t quit my job yet,” she said with a laugh. “Who knows what’s going to happen with it until it’s been decided.”

As of Wednesday, roughly 3,400 students and hundreds of vendors had been approved to receive state funds for private education costs through the Steamboat Scholarship, and payments have started to roll out, according to the Wyoming Department of Education. But the program has traveled a bumpy road, including being abruptly halted by a court-ordered injunction in 2025. And with a judge yet to determine the constitutionality questions challenged in a lawsuit, some families are feeling skittish about its permanence.  

“I think everybody just thinks it’s so volatile and political,” Lander mother Jackie Olsson said. “Nobody is really expecting it to last.”

Parents in her homeschooling community are reining in their expectations, even though many like herself applied for the funds, said Olsson, who has home-educated her 10 children. The state funds would help as her family seeks out rigorous enrichment programs such as math camps, she noted. But if the money doesn’t come through, the Olssons will continue doing what they’ve done for years, she said. 

The Steamboat Legacy Scholarship program is designed to give up to $7,000 per student regardless of income for private school tuition or other non-public school services like tutoring or homeschool supplies. 

The universal school voucher bill survived a contentious run through the 2025 Legislature, but not without being assailed by critics who called it an unconstitutional measure that would be challenged in court.

Within months, lawsuit threats became reality when the Wyoming Education Association along with nine parents sued the state to block payments, claiming the program violates the Wyoming Constitution in two key ways. District Court Judge Peter Froelicher issued an injunction that barred the state from disbursing funds in 2025, but the Wyoming Supreme Court in May reversed that decision, clearing the way for Wyoming to once again roll out the payments. 

Froelicher indicated in a recent hearing that he would rule on the lawsuit within 60 days, according to EdChoice Director of Litigation Thomas M. Fisher, who represents the Leck family as intervenors on behalf of the state. Leck is hopeful the ruling will support school choice, she said.

For the Wyoming Education Association, which represents the state’s teachers and other educators but is not a formal union, the state’s rollout of the program appears ill-advised. 

“This is a concerning result because it will allow, in the short term, public taxpayer funds to be spent on private schools — in conflict with the Wyoming Constitution — and not spent on the more than 95% of Wyoming students who attend public schools,” the association said in a statement this summer. 

The lawsuit

The education association’s lawsuit argued 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 current lawsuit states.

This voucher program, it asserted, 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 nonbinary.

The voucher program will also negatively impact funding at public schools the parents’ children attend, the lawsuit said. “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.”

Not long after the education association filed the suit in Laramie District Court, Froelicher issued the temporary injunction that prevented the state from disbursing funds. Wyoming appealed, however, and in its May decision reversing the injunction, the Wyoming Supreme Court concluded the group of parents challenging the case “failed to clearly show they might be irreparably and personally injured.” 

That decision was a promising sign to supporters of the program. 

“Our position is that the state supreme court, even though it said it was not deciding the case on the merits … still functionally decided the most important claims,” Fisher, of EdChoice, said. “It said ‘this is not a case about public school finance, and the plaintiffs really don’t have any constitutional rights at stake,’ and so for our way of thinking, that should be the end of the case.”

The rollout

With the litigation pending in the background, the Wyoming Department of Education has been working to stand up and implement the school voucher program in the run-up to the 2026 school year. 

As of Wednesday, the department had approved 3,359 applications, according to Chief Communications Officer Linda Finnerty, while 583 other approvals were on hold awaiting confirmation of necessary documentation and 325 were awaiting a Sept. 15 deadline to determine their final status. Funding is available for 4,200 spots, Finnerty said. 

The state enlisted a contractor, Odyssey, to control the online marketplace of educational service providers and vendors. Odyssey is the entity that handles the transfer of funds for approved expenditures to providers and vendors at the direction of participating families. 

Nearly 1,000 vendors and 123 schools were listed as registered providers by late August. Vendors range from Braintrust Tutors to Fitness Providers LLC and Educational Kids Apps. Schools, meanwhile, range from Encampment Preschool to BYU Online High School. 

For the Lecks, the money will go toward tuition at Veritas Academy in Cody. When the family previously lived in Casper, their sons attended Fort Caspar, a K-6 classical public school. The Lecks appreciated the methods the school used, like instructing on Greek phonograms so kids could decipher words, Leck said. They liked that the teachers set high behavioral expectations and that screens were used sparingly. 

When the family moved to Cody a couple years ago, they were disappointed to discover no such public option. The kids attended public school for a year, but it wasn’t a good fit, Leck said, so they enrolled in Veritas, a private classical school. 

It was around that time that Leck heard the Wyoming Legislature was drafting a school voucher bill to give parents state funds for non-public school expenses. 

“I’m like, ‘that would be amazing,’” she said. “Because who wants to pay $7,000-plus dollars a year for their kid to go to school just to get what I could get at a public school in Casper?” 

The Legislature did its part to pass the measure, Leck said, and when it was challenged she felt compelled to get involved because she believes strongly in the issue. The Lecks became intervenors to the case, she said, in the hopes that “Wyoming families can have a choice.”