Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t just make the top of the list.
Arkansas under her leadership just made history.
Huckabee Sanders announced Tuesday that Arkansas ranks #1 in the nation for religious liberty, according to the First Liberty Institute’s Religious Liberty in the States index. The Natural State earned a score of 89.2% and becoming one of only two states in the country to receive the index’s first-ever “excellent” rating. Arkansas climbed six spots from last year’s rankings to reach the top.
The rise was driven by two key laws Sanders signed.
Act 677, signed last year, bars state and local governments from penalizing people, businesses, and religious organizations for acting on their beliefs regarding marriage and biological sex.
The Conscience Protection Act, signed in 2023, expanded Arkansas’ Religious Freedom Restoration Act by prohibiting state government discrimination against religious organizations based on their religious identity or status.
“Religious liberty is America’s First Freedom, and Arkansas is leading the nation in protecting it,” Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Our rights come from God, not government, and every American should be free to live according to their faith and conscience. We’ll continue defending that freedom and ensuring the Natural State remains the best place in the country to live, work, and worship.”
Kelly Shackelford, President, CEO, and Chief Counsel at First Liberty, praised Sanders active steps to protect the freedom of religion.
“Religious liberty is best protected when leaders are willing to act before the rights of people of faith are threatened,” Shackelford said. “Governor Sanders and Arkansas lawmakers have taken that responsibility seriously, adopting strong protections that help ensure Arkansans can live and work according to conscience. Arkansas’ top ranking is a well-earned recognition, and it should motivate leaders across the country to strengthen religious liberty protections in their own states.”
Dr. Mark David Hall, director of the Religious Liberty in the States project, praised Arkansas as a model for the entire United States.
“States have always served as laboratories of liberty, and this year’s results show why that matters,” Hall said. “Arkansas’s rise to the top of the index demonstrates that state lawmakers can take concrete action to protect what America’s founders called ‘the sacred right of conscience.’ These safeguards help ensure that Americans are free to live out their faith in public life, not only within the walls of a house of worship.”
Huckabee Sanders has also publicly fought back against the secular left’s attempts to strip Christian faith from public life.
In December, she rejected demands from the Freedom From Religion Foundation to keep state offices open for Christmas.
“Only by voicing our own faith and celebrating other faiths can we make our state’s diverse religious communities feel seen and heard,” she wrote.
Arkansas has earned the top spot.
And Huckabee Sanders has made clear she has only just begun.