Arkansas is the best state at protecting religious liberty, according to the 2026 edition of the annual Religious Liberty in the States (RLS) report from First Liberty Institute.
First Liberty, which is the largest legal organization in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty, released the annual index ranking religious liberty protections for each of the 50 states.
This year, Arkansas and Tennessee ranked first and second, with scores of 89% and 85%. Both states earned an “excellent” rating, meaning that they scored above 80%, marking the first time any state has crossed that threshold in the RLS.
Conducted by the institute’s Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy (CRCD), the report focuses on select legal safeguards of religious exercise in laws and constitutions.
The report assigns a percentage score to each state based on 50 legal protections that states have to protect religious liberty within six categories: government, healthcare, economic life, religious life, and family and education. These protections are gathered into 20 “safeguards,” which researchers average to produce each state’s index score.
The RLS also measures if states did a “poor,” “adequate,” “competent,” or “excellent” job of protecting religious liberty based on the percentage of protections they had adopted.
After ranking sixth in 2025, Arkansas surged to the top this year, taking the spot from Florida, which dropped to third place.
According to the report, Arkansas’ first-place ranking is largely due to the state decision to enact H.B. 1615 — a law that protects individuals and institutions from being forced to participate in wedding ceremonies to which they have religious objections.
Arkansas’ score is 63 percentage points higher than the lowest-ranked state, New York, which RLS authors said protects 26% of the measured safeguards. New York returned to last place for the first time since 2022, taking West Virginiaʼs previous spot.
While Arkansas protects 89% of the religious liberty safeguards tracked in the 2026 RLS index, it is still missing seven of the specific protections RLS considers.
“There remains room for improvement, however, for all states, and our hope is that the Religious Liberty in the States project can help catalyze such gains for years to come,” Jordan Ballor, executive director of First Liberty’s CRCD, wrote in the report.
Changes and improvements among states
“As the report indicates, there are also some hopeful trends as some states have taken action to increase their protections,” Ballor said.
Changes include Tennesseeʼs move from 10th to second place after it adopted what the report called an “exemplary” medical conscience law, with protections that allow healthcare providers and institutions to refuse to perform, provide, or pay for medical services because of their religious beliefs.
While ranking 23rd and 45th, the RLS noted that Georgia and Wyoming adopted Religious Freedom Restoration Acts in 2025, laws to protect individuals and organizations from government regulations that substantially burden their religious practices.
Due to their “competent” and “average” scores, Montana (71.3%), Illinois (70.4%), Mississippi (66.7%), Ohio (66.3%), Idaho (64.2%), South Carolina (62.9%), and Washington (60%) ranked among the 10 best states at protecting religious liberty.
The trends among states have the “potential to become a virtuous cycle as states learn from what other states have done, emulate them, and become more active in protecting and promoting the free-exercise rights of their constituents,” Ballor said.
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