June was a rocky month at the U.S. Supreme Court. But, finally, good news came on its last day. The high court re-affirmed on last week that government must treat the faithful fairly.

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Three years ago many rejoiced when 7 of 9 justices ruled against discrimination towards a Missouri church. Trinity Lutheran’s preschool had qualified for a playground re-surfacing grant, but the state said it could not receive the funds. Why? Because it was religious.

Writing for the court then, Chief Justice John Roberts said Missouri’s position was “odious to our Constitution.”

The Trinity Lutheran ruling has become pivotal already in efforts to curtail religious discrimination. For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cited the decision when changing its rules to ensure churches didn’t get the cold shoulder on relief funds after disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

Trinity Lutheran also set the stage for Tuesday’s victory in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue.

This time the court was considering the case of a school choice program. In 2015, legislators in Montana approved a tax credit for scholarships that would aid some families-in-need whose kids would benefit from a private education. Montana’s bureaucracy then limited the funds only to support children going to non-religious schools.

Several low-income mothers, including Kendra Espinoza, had wanted to use the scholarships to help their kids attend a Christian school. They thought the limitation was unfair and so challenged it in the state’s courts.

Earlier this year, Espinoza told reporters, “I feel that we’re being excluded simply because we are people of religious background, or because our children want to go to a religious school.”

Sadly, the Montana Supreme Court’s solution was to scrap the whole school choice program on the premise that it violated a state ban on funding religious institutions.

But that reasoning did not fly at the U.S. Supreme Court. Writing for the majority again, Chief Justice John Roberts said the U.S. Constitution — the supreme law of the land — “condemns discrimination against religious schools and the families whose children attend them.”

Roberts went on, citing the Trinity Lutheran ruling, by affirming the faithful are part of the community and “their exclusion from the scholarship program here is ‘odious to our Constitution’ and ‘cannot stand.’”

The court also took aim at the underlying “Blaine Amendment” on which Montana based its reasoning. Roberts reminds us that it has a “shameful pedigree” as the offspring of a 19th century federal anti-Catholic campaign “born of bigotry.” Blaine Amendments, which now undergird secularism, sadly remain in the law of numerous states. Hopefully, this ruling will undercut them and perhaps even lead to their repeal.

Unfortunately, unlike the Trinity Lutheran ruling, Espinoza only garnered a 5-4 majority. One of the arguments raised by dissenting Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan is that Montana’s elimination of the whole school choice program removed any possible religious discrimination.

But the majority dispensed with this “no harm, no foul” type of approach. It’s unacceptably because Montana’s high court scrapped the program solely because the tax credits helped religious people.

Well-known George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin helps clarify why Ginsburg’s reasoning is so precarious:

Imagine that a state legislature enacted a school choice program similar to Montana’s, and that the state supreme court then struck it down because it violated a provision in the state constitution barring state aid to racially integrated schools. The state could then argue there was no racial discrimination here, because the end result of the ruling was that students attending both segregated and integrated private schools are denied tax credits. Few would deny that the state government would be acting unconstitutionally in such a case, because the denial of tax credits was the result of a provision in state law that explicitly discriminates on the basis of race. The Montana Supreme Court ruling enforcing the Blaine Amendment in Espinoza qualifies as discrimination on the basis of religion, for exactly the same reason.

Does that sound right to you? It probably seems like common sense. In fact, the whole idea of government not treating the faithful unfairly in generally applicable programs sounds pretty straight-forward, doesn’t it?

Well, it didn’t to 4 of 9 justices. That is something to think and pray about as rumors pick up about both Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas considering retirement.

“My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” (Ps. 62:7-8)

(Aaron Mercer is a Contributing Writer with two decades of experience in Washington, D.C.’s public policy arena and Christian associations. A seasoned strategist, he aids organizations with research, analysis, and writing services, and he reflects on faith, technology, and the public square at FTPolicy.com.)

Share your prayers in the comments below that this Espinoza ruling becomes a landmark victory with mighty repercussion supporting religious freedom in the nation’s capital, the states, and beyond.