Yesterday, First Liberty Institute released its report Religious Liberty in the States 2025 (full text) (Report website). According to the 16-page report:
Now in its fourth annual edition, RLS considers forty-seven distinct legal protections that states have adopted to protect religious liberty. These legal protections, which we refer to as “items,” are aggregated into twenty “safeguards,” which we average to produce one index score per state. The index allows us to rank states and to track changes in religious liberty protections over time…. Source data, including hyperlinked citations to state statutes, are published online at religiouslibertyinthestates.com….
Florida is an exemplar for how state legislators can improve their state’s protection of religious liberty. When we began the project, Florida protected a respectable 58 percent of the eleven safeguards we considered in 2022 and was ranked sixth in the nation. Today, it protects 75 percent of the twenty safeguards we consider and ranks first. Most of its improvement derived from legislation strengthening its medical conscience protections in 2023 and legislation protecting houses of worship from discriminatory treatment during pandemics and other emergencies in 2022….