The State of Religious Liberty, with Paul D. Mueller

State religious liberty laws are the part of this fight almost nobody watches. Supreme Court cases get the headlines. The statutes that decide whether a baker, a nurse, a foster parent, or a congregation ever ends up in court at all sit quietly in fifty state codes, and most Christians have no idea what their own state has on the books.

Paul Mueller, senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, co-authors Religious Liberty in the States, an annual index now in its fifth year. It scores every state on roughly fifty discrete protections grouped into twenty weighted safeguard categories. Not aspirational protections. Not vibes about whether a state feels Christian. What is actually enacted.

The rankings scramble most assumptions people bring to the map, and they make three things clear: legislation beats litigation, the red and blue shorthand fails here, and the libertarian objection to religious exemptions deserves an answer.

Chapters:

0:22 Guest Intro and Background

5:48 How the Index Works

13:33 Libertarian Tensions in Law

23:19 Why State Protections Matter

28:16 Reading the State Rankings

37:12 Why Most States Lag

40:06 Measuring Real-World Impact

44:52 Getting the Report Heard