Today, by 5-to-4, with John Roberts shockingly joining the four conservatives on that court, the US Supreme Court ruled that blocking state aid to religious schools, if such aid was available to private schools, in general, was unconstitutional. This is from Roberts’s opinion:

A state need not subsidize private education, but once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.

That was 100% good news.

A myth has grown up that providing an education to children must be done by the government via a system of government owned and operated schools. Along with that myth a corollary has developed that any use of state revenue to support non-government schools deprives government schools of resources. This is patent nonsense. Tax dollars for education are to educate children and it doesn’t matter where that education takes place or who does it so long as it happens. If a child goes to a private school, the government school reaps a windfall. They not only don’t have to teach a child, they get to keep the taxes that child’s parents pay while the parent have to tuition in addition to the taxes.

This case, however, tends to have greater import.

Justice Neil Gorsuch went out of his way to demolish the idea that ‘free exercise of religion’ was the same as the Obama-esque ‘freedom of worship.’

Most importantly, though, it is not as if the First Amendment cares. The Constitution forbids laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion. That guarantee protects not just the right to be a religious person, holding beliefs inwardlyand secretly; it also protects the right to act on those beliefs outwardly and publicly. //

Even today, in fiefdoms small and large, people of faith are made to choose between receiving the protection of the State and living lives true to their religious convictions.

Of course, in public benefits cases like the one before us the stakes are not so dramatic. Individuals are forced only to choose between forgoing state aid or pursuing some aspect of their faith. The government does not put a gun to the head, only a thumb on the scale. But, as so many of our cases explain, the Free Exercise Clause doesn’t easily tolerate either; any discrimination against religious exercise must meet the demands of strict scrutiny. In this way, the Clause seeks to ensure that religion remains “a matter of voluntary choice by individuals and their associations, [where] each sect ‘flourish[es] according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma,’” influenced by neither where the government points its gun nor where it places its thumb. McDaniel, 435 U. S., at 640 (opinion of Brennan J.) (quoting Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 313 (1952)).

Montana’s Supreme Court disregarded these foundational principles. Effectively, the court told the state legislature and parents of Montana like Ms. Espinoza: You can have school choice, but if anyone dares to choose to send a child to an accredited religious school, the program will be shuttered. That condition on a public benefit discriminates against the free exercise of religion. Calling it discrimination on the basis of religious status or religious activity makes no difference: It is unconstitutional all the same.