A new database launched Thursday is drawing attention to hundreds of state laws and regulations that legal experts say have flown under the radar and are in need of reexamination following a string of religious freedom cases at the Supreme Court.
The website, religiousequality.net, catalogs over 600 state-level provisions across all 50 states that exclude religious nonprofit groups from participating in neutral public benefit programs, including those for early childhood education, special education, charitable aid, and the arts.
“There’s a whole bunch of bad law that is on the books — hidden in corners that I think a lot of states don’t even know about — that unconstitutionally discriminates against religious organizations and religious conduct,” said Notre Dame law professor Nicole Garnett, one of the project’s lead architects.
Developed by the Epic Coalition in partnership with Notre Dame Law School’s Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic and the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition, the tool is designed to spotlight laws that violate the First Amendment under recent Supreme Court rulings.
“This law tends to have been adopted in a previous era, when there was more constitutional suspicion toward religious conduct,” Garnett told the Washington Examiner.
“It reflects an outdated understanding of the First Amendment that views religion with hostility,” she added.
Garnett said the goal of the database is to shine “light in these dark corners” of state policy. “This is all really bad. This is all unconstitutional. And you should stop it now,” she said. “Hopefully, the people in charge of these laws will fix them — either through legislation, executive orders, or attorney general opinions.”
The project draws its legal foundation from what Garnett calls the “trinity” of religious liberty precedents at the Supreme Court: Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017), Espinoza v. Montana (2020), and Carson v. Makin (2022). But while those rulings struck down blanket bans on religious groups accessing public benefits, the real-world application of the precedents remains patchy.
“There’s a whole bunch of bad law still on the books that a lot of states don’t even know about,” Garnett said. “Some of the stuff is so glaring that I can imagine advocates challenging them in court and succeeding.”
Examples of highlighted laws from the tracker include:
• California allows school districts to contract with hospitals for special education services but not with religious hospitals.
• Georgia bars faith-based nonprofit groups from receiving donations through the state employee giving program unless they separate religious and secular operations.
• Oklahoma: excludes public funds for arts or recreation programs that serve or support a religious denomination or sect.
• Arkansas offers grants for small museums but not for projects with a religious purpose or message.
• Massachusetts allows surplus military food to be donated to charitable institutions but not to religious organizations.
Garnett emphasized that while litigation is one possible path, “I would rather have legal reform than lawsuits.” She also noted the significance of the coalition behind the tracker, which includes Catholic and Jewish organizations working together to document what they view as systemic bias.
“This is just states — and a few local provisions,” she said. “But we haven’t even gotten to the federal level yet. There are hundreds and hundreds of violations in federal law as well.”
The launch of the tracker comes as Oklahoma emerges as a flashpoint in the broader religious freedom debate.
On Monday, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) issued an executive order instructing all state agencies to identify and eliminate rules that discriminate against religious organizations. The order followed a 2023 amendment to Oklahoma’s Religious Freedom Act and was issued just weeks before the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the case involving St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, the first proposed state-funded religious charter school in the country.
The Sooner State is at a crossroads in its conservative leadership, as Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is running to replace Stitt in 2026, has vehemently challenged calls to allow public-funded religious charter schools.
“Gov. Stitt has been clear that he supports our tax dollars funding radical Muslim schools teaching Sharia Law, and I couldn’t disagree with him more,” Drummond said in response to Stitt’s order.
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While Garnett said she hopes the Supreme Court rules in favor of St. Isidore, she cautioned that the decision will not resolve most of the issues identified by the tracker.
“A victory for St. Isidore would be awesome, in my view, but it’s not going to take care of work-study restrictions in Idaho or the pervasive discrimination against religious providers in pre-K programs,” she said.