A novel cavity-backed slot ESPAR cross array with plane-independent beam scanning capability is presented in this paper. As with conventional ESPAR antenna, the parasitic cavities are fed by the center driven cavity and terminated with tunable capacitors. Due to the difficulty of achieving E-plane coupling and minimizing cross coupling between the E- and H-plane parasitic elements there are relatively few reported two-dimensional beam steering ESPAR designs. In this work it is demonstrated that these challenges can be overcome by exploiting the cavity arrangement and geometry to control the coupling between cavities. Independent E- and H-plane beam steering control is achieved by dynamically changing the load impedance of corresponding parasitic elements. It is shown that this ESPAR cross array is able to steer the beam from −24 to 24 degrees in the E-plane and −20 to 20 degrees in the H-plane; the demonstrated beam steering performance in either plane is comparable to ESPAR antennas only able to operate in a single plane.