Louis Brown, a lawyer and the executive director of the Catholic healthcare nonprofit Christ Medicus Foundation, was commenting on the Napa Legal Institute’s release of its 2024 Faith and Freedom Index.
The report ranked states based on religious and regulatory freedom, finding that various parts of the country “over-burden and are even hostile” toward faith-based nonprofits.
According to the index, Michigan, Washington, Massachusetts and West Virginia are some of the worst states for religious freedom. Michigan received a religious freedom score of 22% and a regulatory freedom score of 49%, earning an overall score of 32%.
Washington state earned a combined score of 35%, while Massachusetts and West Virginia each had an overall score of 38%.
States that received the highest overall rankings for protecting religious freedom and creating an environment for faith-based nonprofits to thrive included Alabama (72%), Indiana (68%), Texas (64%) and Kansas (64%).
For Brown, Michigan’s ranking was not surprising, but he still expressed dismay over what his former home state had become. The lawyer remembered with fondness the Michigan he grew up in during the ’80s and ’90s, noting that the protection of religious exercise at the time “advanced [his] growth and development as a child.”