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2025 Religious Liberty Rankings
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What’s new in RLS 2025?

Religious Liberty in the States (RLS) is a data project and index measure reflecting the current landscape of free-exercise protections at the state level.

Now in its fourth annual edition, RLS is newly reorganized under five categories: government, health care, economic life, religious life, and family and education. The index has also been expanded to analyzes all 50 states on 47 detailed items, including new safeguards that protect providers of medical and counseling services, parents who opt their children out of sexual education, and student athletes who wear religious attire.

Group of students sitting around a table collaborating on a project, with an older male teacher standing and guiding them.

With richer data, anyone can dig deeper!

RLS 2025 has been updated to reflect a broader scope of 20 safeguards and the changes in states’ laws during 2024. Equipped with four years of data and an expanded set of safeguards, researchers and concerned citizens alike can learn more.

Explore what your state is doing now to protect religious liberty. And, where it’s lacking, look to other states for examples of what is possible. Find (and share) your state’s scorecard or explore across states in a topic area of interest to you.

Researchers will find the complete RLS 2025 dataset useful. Now longitudinal, it includes complete citations to state statutes and detailed notes from the RLS research team.

rev samuel stillman
rev samuel stillman
<span class="tablet-show">“</span>Some of the natural rights of mankind are unalienable, and subject to no control but that of the Deity. Such are the SACRED RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE; which, in a state of nature and of civil society, are exactly the same. They can neither be parted with nor controlled by any human authority whatever.” <div class="quote-attrib">Samuel Stillman (1779)</div>
Some of the natural rights of mankind are unalienable, and subject to no control but that of the Deity. Such are the SACRED RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE; which, in a state of nature and of civil society, are exactly the same. They can neither be parted with nor controlled by any human authority whatever.”
Samuel Stillman (1779)