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Justices held that the application of Montana’s “no-aid provision” discriminated against religious schools and families whose children attend or hope to attend them in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in the 5-4 decision.

The decision represents a “turning point in the sad and static history of American education,” said DeVos, who called on states to “seize the extraordinary opportunity” to expand education options. Long opposed to Blaine Amendments as rooted in “anti-Catholic” bias, DeVos said Montana and other states should be “very clear” about the decision.

“Your bigoted Blaine Amendments and other restrictions like them are unconstitutional, dead, and buried,” she said in a statement. “Too many students have been discriminated against based on their faith and have been forced to stay in schools that don’t match their values.”

Proponents of school choice said it was a major triumph in the courts. “The weight that this monumental decision carries is immense, as it’s an extraordinary victory for student achievement, parental control, equality in educational opportunities, and First Amendment rights,” said Jeanne Allen, the founder and chief executive of the Center for Education Reform.

The American Federation for Children, the school choice group DeVos once chaired, now looks forward to the continued expansion of such scholarship programs in Montana and across the country, said its president, John Schilling. “The Court rightly recognized the discriminatory nature of state Blaine amendments, and they’ve once again affirmed the constitutionality of school choice programs,” he said in a statement.

Teachers unions tied the decision to DeVos’ work on school choice.

Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest union, said the ruling undermines public education and opens the door for “further attacks on state decisions not to fund religious schools.”

“For decades, Betsy DeVos has financed a methodical attack on the public schools that educate 90 percent of the nation’s children,” she said. “The Espinoza decision narrows the bases on which states may refuse her calls to fund private religious schools.”

During arguments in January, Adam Unikowsky, who argued for the Montana Department of Revenue, said that the state constitution’s “No-Aid Clause” protects religious freedom from governmental interference.

The Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm based in Arlington, Va., pushing school-choice expansion in the courts, represents the Montana families. A lawyer from the solicitor general’s office also argued in support of the families, saying Montana’s constitutional provision is “inconsistent with and preempted by the federal free-exercise clause.”

Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday that because of the ruling, “a state may no longer disqualify religious schools from scholarships or other programs ‘solely because they are religious.'”

In Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the Supreme Court decided in 2002 that the U.S. Constitution allows states to include religious schools in a school choice program. The question in the Espinoza case was whether it’s permissible for states to exclude them, according to Erica Smith, an Institute for Justice lawyer who is lead co-counsel for the Montana families.

School choice advocates were optimistic because of a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer that held Missouri had wrongly denied a church a state grant to rebuild its playground “simply because of what it is — a church.” But a plurality added a footnote that appeared to try to limit the ruling, suggesting it doesn’t address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.

Roberts references Trinity in his opinion, writing, “Here too Montana’s no-aid provision bars religious schools from public benefits solely because of the religious character of the schools. The provision also bars parents who wish to send their children to a religious school from those same benefits, again solely because of the religious character of the school.”