How RLS Has Expanded in Its Third Edition

The goal of the Religious Liberty in the States report is to rank states on their religious liberty policies and analyze the different ways states do—or don’t—protect this fundamental right. Doing so also helps us see the degree to which people are free to exercise their religious liberty from state to state. 

The central way RLS illustrates these variances is through safeguards, which represent the opportunities in everyday life to practice religious liberty. New areas have been identified every year since the project’s launch in 2022. 

Within these safeguards are items that illuminate who is protected from what consequences and what practices those protections enable those individuals to carry out. Both items and their parent safeguards fall into groups that represent the connections between various safeguards. 

The original scope of religious liberty protections outlined in RLS’ 2022 edition covered 29 items nested within 11 safeguards and six overall groups. In 2023, RLS expanded its coverage to include 34 items, 14 safeguards, and seven groups. 

This year, there are 39 items and 16 safeguards. Each expansion of these protections can significantly alter a state’s score and its reputation for valuing and defending religious liberty. 

What Changed in the RLS from 2023 to 2024

RLS expanded its scope this year to include two new safeguards, bringing the total to 16.  These safeguards remain in the seven groups established in 2022:

• Absentee Voting
• Health-Care Provisions
• Health Insurance Mandate (regarding abortion, contraception, and sterilization)
• Marriage & Weddings
• Religious Ceremonial Life
• Religious Freedom Restoration Act
• School-Aged Children

The first new safeguard measures whether houses of worship are protected from closing during a pandemic or similar crises. This was identified in response to eighteen states establishing statutes that prohibited governments from treating houses of worship differently than similarly situated businesses. It falls within the purview of Religious Ceremonial Life. 

The second safeguard was an item that has been elevated to a safeguard: nonparticipation by clergy in ceremonies that violate their conscience and can be found in the Marriage & Weddings group. This is as important as the protection of public officials, which was identified as a safeguard in 2023. 

Learn more about these two new safeguards here. 

The five new items in RLS 2024 include health insurance mandate exceptions permitting employers to decline coverage for abortions or sterilizations if they have religious objections to these procedures. The safeguard for houses of worship has also been established as an item; the final two new items cover laws that allow college and university students to have excused absences for religious reasons.

Comparing the results from 2023 to 2024

2024 saw the same number of states with scores above 50 percent—only 13 in both years. However, the average score slightly increased, from 44 percent in 2023 to 45 percent in 2024.

The most remarkable changes from 2023 to 2024 are the significant improvement for Florida, Montana, and last place West Virginia. Florida now has a safeguard score of 73 percent (compared to 60 percent in 2023), Montana has a safeguard score of 66 percent (compared to 46 percent), and although it is still in last place, West Virginia’s safeguard score improved from 14 to 25 percent. 

Florida and Montana, which now rank 2nd and 3rd, respectively, after ranking 8th and 20th in 2023, increased their scores because their legislators passed laws to protect items measured in previous RLS reports, and they had some, but not all, of the new safeguards already in place. West Virginia improved its score by passing a Religious Freedom Restoration Act. 

Although Illinois remains in first place, its safeguard score dropped from 85 to 80 percent because it lacks one of the newly added safeguards—the statute protecting houses of worship. 

As the index changes, it is important to assess whether scores are the result of new components being in place rather than changes to the original safeguards and to refrain from making apples-to-apples comparisons from one year to the next. Learn more about how to compare scores from different years here.