(The Center Square) – New York was ranked dead last in legal protections of religious liberty in a new report that criticized the state’s support for abortion and a lack of safeguards for religious groups.
The index, produced annually by the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy at First Liberty Institute, ranks each state based on 20 broad legal safeguards encompassing 50 specific statutory protections.
The report’s authors evaluated each state’s laws to determine if they protect the “free exercise of religion” in areas such as education, employment, health care, parental rights, licensing, and conscience protections.
New York was ranked 50th in the center’s 2026 Religious Liberty in the States report, dropping from 45th place just one year ago.
Among the issues that contributed to the state’s low grading was the lack of a contraception refusal law, or protections shielding healthcare workers who object to abortion on religious groups from legal action if they choose not to participate in the procedure.
Other factors that restrict religious liberty in New York are a lack of religious accommodations for students and teachers, protections for faith-based adoption and foster care agencies and religious liberty protections for licensed professionals, according to the report’s authors.
The Empire State also got low marks for not approving the state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Act, commonly known as a RFRA.
In 1993, Congress enacted the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in City of Boerne v. Flores five years later ruled that the federal law could not be applied to state and local governments.
States have been encouraged to adopt their own versions to restore those protections under state law, and at least 30 have enacted their own religious freedom statutes, according to the group. New York is not among them.
In this year’s report, Arkansas claimed the No. 1 ranking this year with an overall score of 89%, becoming the highest-ranked state in the fifth edition of the report. In the Northeast region, Vemont placed 49th, while New Hampshire was ranked 30th among states. Maine was ranked 43rd.
Only two states – Arkansas and Tennessee – were ranked “excellent” by the group, which cited state level approval of more than 80% of the legal protections included in the federal law.
