Building off last summer’s Hobby Lobby decision, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an Arkansas state prison rule that bars inmates from growing beards that measure more than a quarter inch long violates inmates’ religious freedoms.

The case involves Arkansas inmate Gregory H. Holt, who goes by the name Abdul Maalik Muhammed and identifies as a devout Muslim. Holt is serving a life sentence for burglary and domestic battery. The prison in which Holt is incarcerated bans all facial hair for inmates, with an exception for inmates with skin conditions who wish to grow a quarter-inch beard.

Holt had requested an accommodation from that policy to allow him to grow a half-inch beard, in accordance with his faith. Correctional officers denied his request and Holt sued, arguing that the prison’s policy violates his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) of 2000.

RLUIPA is a federal law that requires accommodations for prisoners’ religious practices in some settings. A federal trial court denied Holt’s claims, as did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Holt’s attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court, which, after granting a temporary injunction allowing Holt to wear his beard, agreed to review the case.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion for the Court, concluding that while the state has a legitimate need to prevent prisoners from concealing contraband, “the argument that this interest would be seriously compromised by allowing an inmate to grow a 1⁄2-inch beard is hard to take seriously.”

“An item of contraband would have to be very small indeed to be concealed by a 1⁄2-inch beard, and a prisoner seeking to hide an item in such a short beard would have to find a way to prevent the item from falling out,” Alito wrote. “Since the Department does not demand that inmates have shaved heads or short crew cuts, it is hard to see why an inmate would seek to hide contraband in a 1⁄2-inch beard rather than in the longer hair on his head.”

In many ways the unanimous decision was not a surprise. Arkansas’ policy is one of the most restrictive in the country, and attorneys defending the policy struggled to explain how it couldn’t meet its security concerns, perhaps by searching prisoners’ beards rather than banning them outright.

While a win for prisoner’s religious rights, the case represents the first big test of the Hobby Lobby decision in a non-contraception benefit-related legal challenge, and despite the justices’ unanimity in favor of Holt, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg used the case as an opportunity to highlight the conservative majority’s flawed reasoning in Hobby Lobby.

That ruling stated that certain for-profit corporations could assert religious objections to including contraception in the list of preventive services covered in their employee health-care plans.

“Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. accommodating petitioner’s religious belief in this case would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner’s belief. On that understanding, I join the Court’s opinion,” Ginsburg’s concurring opinion states in its entirety.