Ohio drops slightly in new religious freedom index

Ohio dropped slightly in a new index that measures religious freedom across the country.

According to the 2026 Religious Liberty in the States Index from the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, the Buckeye State ranked seventh, with a score of 66.3%.

That is down slightly from its fourth-place ranking and 66.9% score in 2025 and its fifth-place ranking and 64.6% score in 2024. However, Ohio remains well above its No. 30 ranking in 2022.

“Religious freedom is our first freedom, and the founders called it that, and it’s the first two clauses of the First Amendment because they understood that if you lose this freedom, you will lose all of your freedoms,” Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of the First Liberty Institute, which launched the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, said during a news conference.

“…The one thing that a totalitarian regime will never allow are citizens who hold an allegiance to one higher than the government,” Shackelford added. “So whenever that coalescing of power happens to take away freedom, the first flashpoint is always religious freedom, and if you lose there, you will lose everything else.”

Arkansas topped this year’s ranking with a score of 89.2%. Most states are sitting in the 40% range, Mark David Hall said during a Tuesday press conference.

The study began five years ago and previously examined 29 ways states can protect religious liberty. The list has grown to 50 ways.

“One reason they go up is we began the study with 29 laws,” Mark David Hall, a senior research fellow at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, said during the news conference. “We continue to add to it, and so you might be a state like Mississippi that’s doing all right, but then we add new laws, and Mississippi doesn’t have those laws, and so Mississippi goes down in the rankings, even though they haven’t repealed things.

“What we really like to see though is Arkansas or states like Arkansas that go up because they’re passing new things. So this is really the ideal that we want to see,” he added.

On the government front, the index noted that Ohio does not have a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a measure based on the federal law that requires that religious liberty be limited only by the “least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government interest.” According to the analysis, the state also does not have protections for public officials who have religious objections to participating in same-sex marriages.

However, Ohio allows absentee voting, so voters can cast ballots on a day other than Election Day if that day conflicts with a religious observance.