language: en · status: in-force · last checked: 2026-10-08

Arizona — parental consent for pupils' biometric information and recordings (A.R.S. §15-109, §1-602)

Two Arizona sections that bind schools rather than vendors, but decide whether a product that measures a pupil's voice, face or other physical characteristics, or records them, can be used at all. A.R.S. §15-109 forbids a district or charter school to collect biometric information from a pupil without the parent's written permission, after 30 days' written notice. §15-109, the earlier-enacted of the two, was added (as §15-107, under the same heading) by Laws 2008, ch. 189 (SB 1216), approved by the Governor on 12 May 2008; the act names no effective date, so it took effect on the 48th Legislature, Second Regular Session's general effective date, 26 September 2008, under Ariz. Const. art. IV, pt. 1, §1(3) (§1-602 followed in Laws 2010, ch. 307, effective 29 July 2010). A.R.S. §1-602, the Parents' Bill of Rights, lists among the rights reserved to parents the right to consent in writing before a biometric scan of the child is made under §15-109, and before the State or a political subdivision makes a video or voice recording of the child, subject to listed exceptions.

Applicability to EdTech

• Voice and face are biometric if used to identify. "Collect biometric information" means "the noninvasive electronic measurement and evaluation of any physical characteristics that are attributable to a single person, including … vocal characteristics, facial characteristics …, used for the purpose of electronically identifying that person with a high degree of certainty" (§15-109(C)). Voice or face processing that does not identify the pupil (speech-to-text, for example) is outside the definition. Speaker or face recognition is inside it.
• Written permission and 30 days' notice before collection. The school may not collect without the parent's written permission (§15-109(A)), and must give at least thirty days' written notice that includes a statement "in eighteen point bold-faced capital letters" that permission is required (§15-109(B)).
• Recordings by a school need written consent unless an exception applies. Parents have "the right to consent in writing before this state or any of its political subdivisions makes a video or voice recording of the minor child", except for listed purposes including "a purpose related to regular classroom instruction" and "a legitimate academic or extracurricular activity" (§1-602(A)(9)). Whether a product's audio capture falls inside those exceptions is a question for the school's deployment, and this text is what it will be decided against.
• The biometric-scan right is cross-referenced at §1-602(A)(7). Parents may sue a governmental entity for violations of the chapter (§1-602(E)).

Contents

Key obligations at a glance

• No biometric collection from a pupil without written parental permission — §15-109(A).
• 30 days' written notice in the prescribed form first — §15-109(B).
• Written parental consent before a school makes a video or voice recording, outside the listed exceptions — §1-602(A)(9).

Enforcement

§15-109 sets no penalty. Under §1-602(E) a parent may bring suit against a governmental entity or official for violations of the statutory rights in the chapter, and under §1-602(F)–(G) the entity bears the burden of proof, with declaratory or injunctive relief, compensatory damages and attorney fees available (§1-602(E), (G)).

Licence

The corpus reproduces A.R.S. §15-109 and §1-602 verbatim from the Arizona Legislative Council's pages on azleg.gov (read 2026-10-08), which carry no copyright notice.

Statute text enacted by a state legislature is outside copyright under the government edicts doctrine. In Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255 (2020) (slip opinion, read 2026-10-01), the Supreme Court held: "Under what has been dubbed the government edicts doctrine, officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official duties." It applied the doctrine to an arm of the legislature as well as to legislators: "Because Georgia’s annotations are authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties, the government edicts doctrine puts them outside the reach of copyright protection."

Conditions: none attach to the statute text. The corpus nonetheless names the official source in its Sources section and in the fact document's {.meta} provenance lines, and its Meta section describes what it changed (anchors added, whitespace collapsed, nothing reworded).

Related

• Arizona student data privacy (A.R.S. §15-1046) — the operator statute, whose covered information lists biometric information and voice recordings
• Illinois BIPA — the private-sector biometric statute with a private right of action, for contrast

Sources

• Arizona State Legislature — A.R.S. §15-109
• Arizona State Legislature — A.R.S. §1-602
• Arizona State Legislature — Laws 2008, ch. 189 (SB 1216) — adds the biometric section as §15-107; "APPROVED BY THE GOVERNOR MAY 12, 2008"; no effective-date section
• Arizona State Legislature — Laws 2010, ch. 307 (SB 1309) — adds title 1, chapter 6, including §1-602; "APPROVED BY THE GOVERNOR MAY 10, 2010"; no effective-date section
• Arizona State Legislature — General effective dates — the general effective date of each session: "2008 Forty-eighth Legislature - Second Regular Session 09-26-2008"; "Forty-ninth Legislature - Second Regular Session 07-29-2010"
• Arizona State Legislature — Constitution of Arizona, art. IV, pt. 1, §1 — subsection (3): "no act passed by the legislature shall be operative for ninety days after the close of the session of the legislature enacting such measure", save emergency and appropriation measures