by Jacqueline Isaacs, MBA, Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy Fellow • 4 minutes
Last week’s midterm elections dramatically reshaped America’s political landscape. Democrats won control of both houses of Congress and made significant gains in state governments across the country, including—and perhaps most dramatically—Texas. For Americans living in traditionally conservative states that are now turning “blue” (or at least “purple”) who are concerned about religious liberty, the results may be leading you to wonder what comes next.
Five years of research from the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy’s Religious Liberty in the States (RLS) project offer an encouraging answer. The future of religious liberty is not determined by any single election, and states with very different political environments have demonstrated that protecting religious exercise is possible. No matter what the political landscape in your state looks like now, opportunities for progress remain.
When RLS launched in 2022, our goal was to document what states were doing to protect religious liberty and what more was possible. Now, with five editions published, RLS has documented an expanding range of legal protections (a total of 50 in 2026, compared to 29 in 2022), identified opportunities for reform, and observed different states rise and fall in the rankings. Along the way, several important lessons have emerged that offer a roadmap for the years ahead.
Religious Liberty Is Bigger Than Partisan Politics
One of the most surprising findings of the inaugural RLS report in 2022 was that the top two states in the rankings were “red” Mississippi and “blue” Illinois. Despite their different political environments, both had enacted significant protections for religious exercise.
These results challenged the assumption that Republican-led states necessarily provide stronger religious liberty protections than Democratic-led states. As then-project director Dr. Sarah Estelle observed, measuring “state law on religious liberty issues has resulted in no clear partisan divide.”
Illinois then took first place in 2023, while some states commonly associated with conservative politics ranked surprisingly low. West Virginia, for example, came in last place that year. As the current project director Dr. Mark David Hall explained in WORLD, the success of the Prairie State offers an important counterexample to conventional political narratives.
These findings should be encouraging in an era of deep political polarization like we find ourselves in today. They demonstrate that strong religious liberty protections can exist under very different political circumstances and suggest opportunities for bipartisan cooperation.
But Illinois’s early success also offers a cautionary tale, particularly for states experiencing political change today. Illinois found itself at the top of the rankings not because it had a recent emphasis on establishing religious liberty protections, but because its strong safeguards were put in place long ago. Its Religious Freedom Restoration Act has been in place since 1998, and the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which provides general conscience protection for healthcare providers, was originally passed in 1977. In fact, all but one of Illinois’s protections that are tracked by RLS were passed before 1999.
So while Illinois enjoyed the first place spot in 2023 and 2024, Florida overtook it in 2025 following legislative efforts to strengthen its laws. The 2025 RLS report explains:
Although still among the top five states, Illinois fell from its first-place position in RLS 2023 and 2024. It now protects only 69 percent of the safeguards we consider, whereas in 2022 it protected 81 percent of them. We add new religious liberty protections to the index as we discover them, as long as they have been implemented in at least one state. Religious liberty now seems more tenuous in the Land of Lincoln than it did when we started this index, not because the state repealed protections but because it has not implemented new protections that other states have.
Illinois, now in fifth place, has become the most prominent example of a state falling behind as other states have adopted protections it lacks. Connecticut went a step further, actually eliminating the religious exemption from its childhood immunization requirement, which contributed to its rank dropping from 11th in 2022 to 29th in the 2023 RLS index. The perhaps ironically nicknamed Constitution State now sits at 33rd place as it continues to fall behind.
In 2026, Arkansas claimed the top position, becoming one of the first states to earn an “Excellent” rating under the RLS framework, along with second-place finisher, Tennessee. Arkansas’s rank increased significantly in part because it enacted protections for individuals and institutions from being forced to participate in wedding ceremonies to which they have religious objections. Tennessee also increased in the rankings after it enacted a general conscience protection.
So while it is true that a state’s current political climate doesn’t dictate where in the RLS index it is ranked, the strong implication is that the current political climate can shape the state’s future. These trends demonstrate that religious liberty protections require continued attention, both to add new safeguards and to prevent the erosion of others.
Charting a Path Forward
Political majorities are temporary, but the laws they enact can endure for decades. States that continue to enjoy favorable political environments should use those opportunities to establish strong religious liberty protections rather than assume future lawmakers will share their priorities. And when political leadership changes, advocates must remain engaged, fighting to both defend existing protections and to build bipartisan support for new ones.
Five years of RLS research have demonstrated that progress is possible in states with very different political environments. We’ve also learned that the work is never finished. Even the highest-ranking states have opportunities to improve, and protections already secured must not be taken for granted.
The 2026 midterms have brought new leaders to office and created a difficult political environment for the years ahead. Some may see these changes as obstacles to religious liberty, but the evidence of the past five years of RLS gives us reason to see opportunities as well.
— — — —
Jacqueline Isaacs, MBA, is a fellow at First Liberty’s Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy. She is currently completing a Doctor of Ministry in faith, work, and marketplace ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. She holds an MBA in marketing from Johns Hopkins University and a BS in government from Oral Roberts University.
