Center for Public Justice: 2024 Report Highlights Surprising Rankings And Key Trends

Editor’s Note: The following story was published by the Center for Public Justice on August 7, 2024, and is authored by Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, founder and senior director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance and advisory council member for RLS.

On July 19, 2024, the Religious Liberty in the States (RLS) project released its third annual report measuring how well the 50 states protect crucial dimensions of individual and institutional religious freedom. In what will likely be a surprise to many, the report ranks the state of Illinois as most protective (Florida and Montana are next) and West Virginia as the least (Alaska and California are nearly as deficient). That counterintuitive ranking, if nothing else, should encourage advocates, citizens, policymakers, and reporters to visit the project website for the downloadable brief 2024 report and the extensive web-based resources detailing the rankings, the 39 distinct types of religious freedom that have been measured, and the report’s methodology. The data reveal significant improvements in Florida and Montana, and although West Virginia remains at the bottom, it has made notable gains in religious freedom. However, the 2024 report shows that most states have enacted less than half of the possible protections available to them.

As the report notes, laws that restrict or protect religious freedom are adopted at the state and not only at the federal level. Thus, to know how well the religious freedom of people and organizations is being protected, it is essential to look closely at state policies and not only action at the federal level. Often, persons and organizations are subject to both federal and state requirements; in other policy areas, states have the primary jurisdiction. (And states determine what cities and counties may do.) However, before the Religious Liberty in the States reports began in 2022, no overview of state religious freedom provisions and trends was available. Religious Liberty in the States is a project of the Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy and the First Liberty Institute. 

The RLS annual reports assess how well states do on a range of important religious freedom protections, with the intent not only to measure the degree of protection in a state but also thereby to identify what each state can do to increase its protection. The web-based complete report links to the actual statutes so that policymakers, citizens, and advocates can easily determine what legislation a state can adopt in order to increase the protection it provides. 

. . .

Read the entire article here.