Codebook –
Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)

In 1997, the decision in City of Boerne v. Flores found the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) unconstitutional in application to states and therefore only relevant to federal actors and acts. Since then, many states have enacted laws, patterned after the federal RFRA, that emphasize protection from the burden of government action that many recognize can follow from religion-neutral laws. Some states passed RFRA laws shortly after the federal court decision while a number of others attempted to pass laws in 2015. The most recent RFRA laws took effect in 2021.

Federal Context

The federal RFRA applies to federal jurisdictions only and so leaves wide open the opportunity for states to address the burdens of their own rules of general applicability.

External Sources

Church Law & Tax compiled a 50-State Religious Freedom Laws Report, which provides citations for states’ RFRAs enacted before 2020. A simple internet search revealed that two states, South Dakota and Montana, passed RFRA laws in 2021, and no states instituted RFRAs in 2022. Becket’s “RFRA Info Central” provides a second corroborating source.

Identifying Codes and Assigning Scores

We read each law cited by Becket’s “RFRA Info Central” and coded each state according to whether the law was in the state’s constitution, the state’s statutes, or nonexistent. While some states have claimed that certain court case decisions yield RFRA-like protections for religious entities and individuals, RLS limits its scope to statutory and state constitutional law.

Possible Codes

A = RFRA in the state constitution

B = RFRA in state statute

C = No RFRA in the state law

Possible Scores

1 = RFRA in constitution or statute (A, B)

0 = No RFRA (C)

Verifying Data

Throughout 2022, BillTrack50 provided the RLS team with updates on relevant bills and state laws related to RFRAs and all the citations from RLS 2022 data, ultimately revealing no changes. The statutes cited for this safeguard were reread in December 2022 and verified with Becket’s “RFRA Info Central.” For the purposes of the index, the research team did not count the Utah Religious Land Use Act or the New Hampshire Religious Use of Land and Structures statute as RFRA law.

Missing Data

Where we find no state RFRA in a state’s laws, we confirm with the two external data sources.