The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state’s move to cashless bail is constitutional, clearing the way for a sweeping criminal justice law to take effect.

The state’s high court ruled 5-2 in favor of the SAFE-T Act’s cashless bail provision, according to Chicago’s Fox affiliate WFLD.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Mary Ann Theis said in the court’s opinion that the Illinois Constitution “does not mandate that monetary bail is the only means to ensure criminal defendants appear for trials or the only means to protect the public.”

The court said the law will take effect Sept. 18.

The ruling from the state’s high court overturns a December opinion from a Kankakee County judge who said the law violated the constitutional provision that “all persons shall be bailable by sufficient sureties.”

“We can now move forward with historic reform to ensure pretrial detainment is determined by the danger an individual poses to the community instead of by their ability to pay their way out of jail,” Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement after the ruling.

Defendants can still be jailed if they’re charged with certain serious crimes and are perceived to be a danger to the community under the new law.

Don Tracy, Illinois’ Republican Party chairman, told the Daily Mail that the law will damage public safety by releasing “dangerous, violent criminals at a time when police are under attack and Illinois families and crime victims already fear for their personal safety.”

However, some law enforcement officials argued that suspects considered a danger to the community make up a bulk of those in state jails.

“It’s not going to be where most people think, that we’re going to open the doors and let everybody out,” Sgt. James Hendricks from the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “More than 85% of our jail population are already violent offenders with serious charges.”

Yet waning officer morale in the state won’t get any help from this law, Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Secretary Donald Hackett told The Center Square.

• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.