Errata
The Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy (CRCD) is committed to the highest established standards of principles and responsibilities for research. The CRCD affirms these principles and responsibilities as outlined in the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity. The principles in the Singapore Statement are commitments to (1) “Honesty in all aspects of research,” (2) “Accountability in the conduct of research,” (3) “Professional courtesy and fairness in working with others,” and (4) “Good stewardship of research on behalf of others.” Part of this commitment to research integrity involves responding appropriately to criticisms, concerns, and questions about research methodology and findings of research. For that reason, the CRCD promotes a culture of discourse consistent with The HxA Way. Errors of fact that are discovered in the work of the CRCD are acknowledged, corrected, and noted in subsequent publications and on our website.
Each year, research assistants for Religious Liberty in the States revisit laws protecting religious liberty that we previously considered, search for new laws, and ensure that states have not passed protections they did not previously have. Many of these laws are straightforward, but for some the exact protections offered or not offered are, on occasion, unclear. RLS 2025 had the advantage of having, for the first time, research assistants who are law students. Caleb Ridings and Sean O’Dea discovered that previous editions of RLS mistakenly gave some states credit for protections they did not have and did not give some states credit for protections they had. We corrected these errors in the database and included a note in the database explaining the error. We discuss these errors in the RLS 2025 report, and we record and provide more details about them on this page.
The following errors were discovered for RLS 2025 and are now fixed for all previous years.
Changes in Scores
1. New Mexico’s general conscience protection. New Mexico Code Ann. §§ 24-7A-7(E) and 24-7A-9 appeared to grant general protections to health-care workers, so RLS 2022, 2023, and 2024 gave the state credit for a robust general conscience protection that covered a host of more narrow protections regarding abortion and sterilization refusal. However, the context surrounding both statutes confines them in practice to advance directives and end-of-life health-care decisions. Accordingly, New Mexico is given credit for protecting health-care professionals from being forced to participate in euthanasia (added this year) but not a general conscience protection (and the narrow protections for abortion and sterilization that the general conscience clause was credited for protecting). Accordingly, its RLS 2024 safeguard score was reduced from 56.4 to 39.6 percent.
See Appendix A: New Mexico Memorandum for more details.
2. Washington’s general conscience protection. Earlier versions of RLS missed the fact that Washington’s general conscience protection, §48.43.065(2)(a) covers three contraception protections (individual, private hospital, and public hospital refusal). Once we corrected these errors, the state’s RLS score for 2024 increased from 58.8 to 62 percent.
3. Florida’s excused absence in universities score was changed from 0 to 1 following the discovery of Fla. Stat. §1006.53. Its 2024 score thus increased from 73.2 to 75 percent.
Changes in Coding or Additions That Did Not Impact Scores
4. Georgia’s mandatory reporter code was changed from “E” to “C” to reflect that clergy are enumerated in the statute but given protections for certain types of professional communications. Changing the code does not affect the score.
5. Links to Alabama’s alcohol laws were switched to reflect which statute actually covered consumption versus furnishment.
6. Two statutes were added to the individual abortion refusal protection for Missouri, making a total of three related statutes. The score was not altered.
