The Supreme Court’s landmark Carson v. Makin decision is welcome news for parents and religious institutions. It ended decades of discrimination in Maine’s school choice program and signaled to other states that they could not bar people from receiving public benefits because of their religious exercise.

Many school districts in Maine are so small that instead of operating public schools, they give families a tuition benefit to use at a school of their choice — except for “sectarian” schools. Like other states, Maine was misguided by the myth of a “high wall of separation” between church and state, and it adopted measures that barred families from using their benefits at religious schools. The idea was that public dollars mustn’t eventually end up benefiting religious institutions, even if those dollars went to families who chose where to send them. This meant that families who wanted to send their children to religious schools had to either forgo free tuition or — if they couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket — choose another school.