The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for big chain liquor stores, such as Knoxville’s Total Wine & More, to spread across Tennessee.

Since 1984, Tennessee has required that initial applicants for a retail liquor license must have lived in the state for two years, while applicants for license renewals must have lived here for 10 consecutive years. That worked to keep out multi-store corporate chains in favor of locally owned stores.

But the court ruled 7-2, upholding the findings of two lower courts, that those residency requirements are unconstitutional.

Total Wine has 197 stores in 23 states; its first, and so far only, Tennessee store opened in Turkey Creek shopping center in June 2018. The Maryland-based chain hailed Wednesday’s decision with an expansion announcement.

“The Court’s ruling today is a victory for consumers in Tennessee and will allow Total Wine & More to continue to bring great service, selection and prices to consumers in its first store in Knoxville, as well as in a second store planned for Brentwood later this year,” a Total Wine news release said.

By the time the Knoxville store opened, litigation was already underway to change Tennessee law. Total Wine was involved, but so were others.

Doug and Mary Ketchum moved from Utah to Tennessee in 2016 for the health of their disabled adult daughter Stacie, according to the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm that represented them. The Ketchums bought the historic Memphis liquor store Kimbrough Wines & Spirits, but their short residency fell foul of state law and the Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association.

Despite being on the losing side of the current case, the TWSRA found a bright spot in parts of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion.

“The majority opinion clearly recognized that liquor is a unique commodity in our nation’s history and affirmed the right of states under the 21st Amendment to enact liquor-related regulations for the health and safety of residents, even if those regulations might be impermissible in other industries under the dormant Commerce Clause,” TWSRA Executive Director Joyce McDaniel said via email. “The guideposts provided by the decision will be helpful to state legislatures throughout the country as they continue to refine their regulation of liquor.”

The TWSRA represents more than 500 individual liquor store owners across the state. Thirty-four other states that have restrictions similar to Tennessee’s joined TWSRA in seeking to keep the residency standard.

The TWSRA threatened to sue the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission if it approved the Ketchums’ application or one submitted around the same time by Total Wine. At that point the state commissioner asked the courts to decide whether the two-year residency requirement was constitutional, the Institute for Justice said.

“The Ketchums and Total Wine won in the federal trial court and before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and then the liquor cartel appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to preserve its state-based economic protectionist scheme,” an Institute for Justice news release said. “The Retailers’ Association tried to defend Tennessee’s durational residency requirements as legitimate exercises of Tennessee’s power under the Twenty-First Amendment, which allows states to regulate alcohol distribution.”