When it comes to accommodating religious individuals or groups, the government has always been given a significant amount of discretion. For example, churches don’t pay many taxes, and they’re exempt from certain anti-discrimination laws when it comes to things like hiring clergy members. But the benefits that accrue from the First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom have historically included limitations on the government’s ability—and obligations—to fund church activity. Thanks to the Supreme Court, that symmetry is disappearing.

The Court on Monday struck down a major barrier between church and state, ruling for the first time ever that the government must give direct cash aid to a church. In a 7-2 ruling, the justices found that Missouri violated the Free Exercise Clause when it excluded Trinity Lutheran Church from a reimbursement grant program to resurface its playground with recycled tire scraps. The exclusion was based on a provision in Missouri’s constitution prohibiting the use of public funds for church aid.

According to Chief Justice John Roberts, Missouri discriminated against Trinity Lutheran “simply because of what it [i]s—a church.” “There is no dispute that Trinity Lutheran is put to the choice between being a church and receiving a government benefit,” he wrote in the court’s majority opinion in the case, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer.

If a state denies public funding to a religious group, the chief justice said, it has to have a compelling reason for doing so beyond mere “policy preference.” It seems that the guiding principles of the Establishment Clause, which established the church-state divide, were not enough.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor addressed this glaring omission in her searing dissent. “The Constitution creates specific rules that control how the government may interact with religious entities,” she wrote, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “And so of course a government may act based on a religious entity’s ‘status’ as such.” Rather than “disfavor” religion, a state’s decision not to fund a church is a “valid choice to remain secular,” according to Sotomayor.