Ending a five-year legal battle, the state Supreme Count awarded a major victory to private engineering firms Thursday by affirming California’s right to outsource potentially billions of dollars in public works projects, the Sacramento Bee reports.

In a unanimous ruling, the court upheld Proposition 35, an initiative approved by voters in 2000 that allowed private engineers and architects to work on state infrastructure projects.

The court ruling also rejected a 2002 lawsuit and subsequent appeals by the 10,000-member Professional Engineers in California Government. The public engineers group had argued that Proposition 35 didn’t repeal state civil service restrictions against private contracting.

The decision figures to open up the public works construction market with California suddenly flush with $42.7 billion in infrastructure bond money approved by voters last year for new highways, schools, levees, housing and parks.

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