States protect civil rights by requiring places of public accommodation to “serve all comers” without respect to certain protected characteristics.  However, recently, laws have been enacted that impose restrictions on the religious freedom of nonprofits that serve the public. Such laws threaten to exclude faith-based institutions from the marketplace of charitable services and limit vulnerable populations’ access to needed services.  Faith-based organizations must be free to manage their internal affairs in accordance with their sincerely-held religious beliefs and in ways that further their religious mission. The church autonomy doctrine, based on an application of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, outlines our country’s protections for this freedom.   This applies both to decisions to provide programming only, or mostly, to co-religionists (that is, members of the same religion as the organization), as well as a religious organization’s prudential decisions to serve a population that includes non-co-religionists.  In both cases, the fundamental First Amendment principle at play is that the government does not have oversight of the internal affairs of religious institutions.

Note that the Index will use the term “nondiscrimination laws” in the modern colloquial sense, which includes both civil rights laws protecting against discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, etc., as well as modern laws that treat sexual expressions, such as sexual orientation and gender identity, as protected classes. However, this use of the term is for ease of readership only; as many esteemed scholars have noted, the colloquial sense of the term inappropriately conflates sexual expression with protected characteristics.  The inclusion of the latter in the use of the term “nondiscrimination laws” is not an endorsement of the propriety of such laws. The term is used for convenience because this is how it is generally defined in current state laws and popular commentary.

Below is a tier ranking of each state for this factor. Click on the state's name to open up its page, which provides more information on that particular state's overall score and relevant laws.