How To Compare Scores Year-Over-Year with RLS

The third year of the Religious Liberty in the States report, like last year’s edition, identifies new safeguards for religious liberty that have increased in awareness and importance over the past year. These new safeguards affect the state rankings from one year to the next. 

Given the expansion of safeguards from year to year, it’s important for RLS readers to know what comprises a state’s score compared to previous years. Put another way: Why, exactly, did a given state’s score increase or decrease? 

Knowing this is important because it helps audiences get an accurate picture of their state’s commitment to religious liberty and whether they will experience any implications as a result of their state’s change in score. 

Generally, there are two types of changes that affect a state’s score. 

First, RLS determines whether a state passed new laws concerning religious liberty and looks for whether those statutory changes pertain to, or were in response to, any of the safeguards included in the past year’s RLS report. 

The second change regards the expansion of the safeguards themselves. New safeguards added to the index in 2024 affect a state’s score depending on whether it already did—or didn’t—have protections on the books for these aspects of religious liberty. 

In other words, a state’s score in any given year depends on what actions the state may have taken since the previous year to strengthen religious liberty protections and what changes have occurred in the RLS report itself within that same time frame. 

Good examples of the first effect are Florida, Montana, and West Virginia, all of whom, as discussed below, improved their scores by passing laws to better protect religious liberty in their states. Illustrations of the second type of change, Illinois and New Hampshire, saw their scores change not because they took any particular actions, but because of the expanded scope of what it means to protect religious liberty reflected in this year’s edition. 

So, just because a state’s score increased doesn’t necessarily mean it’s taken meaningful action within the past year or demonstrated an increased commitment to protecting this important right, and vice versa. 

Figure 3 from the report breaks down the overall change in six states’ scores over the last two years of RLS: 2023’s number one and number 50 states (Illinois and West Virginia, still), as well as two states that made statutory changes to their religious liberty laws and two others whose scores were affected solely by additions to RLS’ list of safeguards. 

The horizontal axis labels “2023 Score” and “2024 Score” indicate that the vertical measures above them are the official, reported RLS scores in that year. The label “2024′” on that same axis indicates that the simulated scores plotted directly above are what the scores in 2024 would be had we not expanded the set of safeguards measured.

Illinois still ranks first in 2024, but its score decreased by five percentage points from 2023 to 2024 because the state does not include one of the safeguards we added for RLS 2024—a statute protecting houses of worship from closing.

New Mexico lacks even more protections for RLS 2024. It still does not provide any items in the Marriage & Weddings category, including laws protecting clergy from being forced to participate in ceremonies that violate their conscience (which was elevated to a safeguard in 2024). It also has no laws protecting houses of worship from being forced to close during a pandemic—an item we’ve added in the wake of COVID-19. As a result of these and other gaps, New Mexico has dropped eight spots to 11th place.

Legislators in Florida and Montana should be given significant credit for doing more to protect religious liberty in their respective states. Both states passed new laws to protect items measured in earlier iterations of RLS, and they had several of the added safeguards in place, including protecting houses of worship from closing. Notably, both states passed general conscience provisions intended to protect medical professionals from having to participate in procedures to which they have religious or moral objections. Florida now ranks 2nd after placing 8th last year; Montana has risen to 3rd place after ranking 20th in 2023. 

New Hampshire is a good example of a state increasing their score without significant implications for their residents. The Granite State’s ranking also improved, from 49th to 41st, but only because the state already had laws protecting items added for RLS 2024, including those for clergy and houses of worship. 

West Virginia remains in last place, but we are pleased to report that the state passed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which contributed to the 11 percent increase in its score.

Finally, in making comparisons of a state’s scores across time, one should note that, with an expanding scope, each of the original 11 safeguards established in RLS 2022 now represents a smaller portion of the whole. All the safeguards are weighted equally, and RLS is measured on a scale of 0 to 100 percent so as to reflect the percent of feasible safeguards a state has in place. But now with 16 safeguards in 2024, a single safeguard is one-sixteenth (approximately 6.3 percent) of the whole (potential) score rather than one-eleventh (about 9 percent) of the whole.

We also acknowledge that some safeguards offer more protection than others. If we had to choose between a state adopting a Religious Freedom Restoration Act and laws requiring that students be excused from school for religious reasons, we would choose the former. But we hope that all states adopt both protections, as well as the other safeguards we measure.