The Liberty Index: All 50 States Ranked

What the index shows

2 states score 100 — the maximum on every measure: permitless carry, no duty to retreat, a right-to-work law, no state wage floor above the federal one, and a universal private school-choice program. They are Tennessee, Wyoming.

4 states score 0, the minimum on all five: Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York.

The median state scores 48. Most states are not at either end — they take the permissive side of some measures and the restrictive side of others, which is the finding the headline numbers hide. Texas scores full marks on four measures and loses points only on the minimum wage; New Hampshire and Kansas sit mid-table for the same kind of split.

The index

Ranked highest to lowest, alphabetical within a tie. Ranks are shared — states on the same score hold the same rank, because the data does not support a tiebreaker. The bar encodes the score and the number is printed on every row, so the reading never depends on colour.

States per score tier · higher scores to the left

No states match that filter.

Methodology

Every input is published here so the score can be checked, disputed, or reweighted. Nothing on this page is asserted independently: all five measures come from datasets we publish separately, each sourced and dated, and each one click away.

Revised 16 October 2026. A fourth domain, taxes, was added on the day of publication, carrying the new state income tax tracker. The index launched with no tax measure at all, which was its most obvious gap. Every state's score changed; the three original domains are unaltered and still weigh a quarter each.

Self-defense — 25% of the score

Whether a law-abiding adult may carry a firearm without asking permission, and whether the law requires them to retreat before defending themselves.

Concealed carry — scored 0–2. Carrying without a state permit scores highest; a permit issued at official discretion scores lowest.

• 2 — Permitless carry
• 1 — Shall-issue permit
• 0 — Permit at official discretion

Stand your ground — scored 0–2. No duty to retreat by statute scores highest; recognition by court decision scores in the middle; states NCSL does not list score 0 — an absence of record, not a finding about their law.

• 2 — No duty to retreat (statute)
• 1 — Recognized by court decision
• 0 — Not listed by NCSL

Work & wages — 25% of the score

Whether a worker can be compelled to fund a union to keep a job, and whether the state sets a wage floor above the federal one.

Right to work — scored 0–1. A right-to-work law — no worker can be required to join or pay a union to hold a job — scores highest.

• 1 — Right-to-work law
• 0 — No right-to-work law

Minimum wage — scored 0–2. No state wage floor above the federal one scores highest; a state floor above the federal minimum scores lowest.

• 2 — No state minimum wage
• 2 — Below federal (federal applies)
• 1 — Matches the federal floor
• 0 — Above the federal floor

Taxes — 25% of the score

Whether the state taxes what you earn, and if it does, whether it applies one rate to every dollar or raises the rate as income climbs.

Income tax — scored 0–3. No individual income tax at all scores highest; taxing capital gains but not wages scores next; a single flat rate scores above graduated brackets, because one rate applied to every dollar asks the same of everyone.

• 3 — No income tax
• 2 — Capital gains only, no wage tax
• 1 — Single flat rate
• 0 — Graduated brackets

Education choice — 25% of the score

Whether a family can direct its child's education funding to a private school of its choosing.

School choice — scored 0–2. A universal or near-universal private-choice program (ESA, voucher or tax-credit scholarship) scores highest; no program scores 0.

• 2 — Universal / near-universal
• 1 — Limited program
• 0 — No private-choice program

Combining them

Each measure is converted to a share of its own maximum. Measures within a domain are averaged, the four domain scores are weighted equally, and the result is a 0–100 composite.

Weighting is by domain, not by measure count, and that is a judgement worth stating. Weighting every measure equally would have made self-defense law two fifths of a score called "liberty" — a gun index wearing a broader name. Equal domain weights hold self-defense, work and education at a third each. Every per-measure point is in the table and the downloads, so anyone who prefers a different weighting can apply it to our own numbers.

Why ranks are shared, and not 1 through 50

Five measures produce 26 distinct scores across 50 states, so many states tie. Ties share a rank and the next group skips ahead, exactly as in sport. Numbering states 1 to 50 would mean inventing tiebreakers the underlying data does not support, and false precision is worse than none.

What we left out, and why

An index is judged as much by its exclusions as its inclusions, so here are ours.

• State gasoline tax — excluded, although we publish it. The standard source measures state excise tax only, and several states levy substantial additional fuel taxes it does not capture. New York is the clearest case: 24.18 cents of excise ranks it 39th of 50 and would have scored it near the top of a tax measure, while its actual burden at the pump is among the highest in the country once its petroleum business tax and sales tax are counted. The figure is correct; it is the wrong figure for this purpose. Income tax carries the fiscal domain instead, because its structure is published per state and is not an artefact of which levies a source happens to count.
• Voter ID and absentee rules — excluded on purpose. They measure how tightly a state administers elections, which is a question of state capacity rather than of how much the state leaves an individual alone. Blending the two axes is how an index of this kind becomes incoherent, because a stricter identification requirement is more government, not less. Those two have their own deliberately neutral index at the State Voting Rules Index.
• The death penalty — excluded for the same reason. Whatever one concludes about it, capital punishment is an exercise of state power over an individual, and scoring its retention as "more liberty" would be indefensible.
• The District of Columbia — not scored. Three of the five source datasets cover 50 states and not D.C. Scoring it would mean treating three missing measures as zeros, which would place it at the bottom of the table for a reason about our data rather than about its law. A missing input is not a score of zero. Excluded: District of Columbia.

What it does not measure

This is a measure of law as written, not of outcomes or of how any rule is administered. It does not capture overall tax burden — sales, property and corporate taxes are all absent, and the income tax measure scores structure rather than the level of the rate — nor occupational licensing, land use, criminal justice, speech, or the dozens of other things a broader index would weigh. It says nothing about whether a state is well governed, a good place to live, or safe. A state can score high here and be a difficult place to start a business, or score low and be an easy one.

It is also narrow by design. The reference work in this field, the Cato Institute's Freedom in the 50 States, weighs more than 230 policy variables; this weighs five. What this index offers instead is freshness and provenance: Cato's seventh edition codes policy as of 31 December 2022, while these five measures are maintained as living trackers and the score recomputes whenever one of them changes. Every row is one click from the dataset it came from, and the whole thing downloads as a file.

Use the data

Free to cite or reproduce under our republication terms. The downloads carry every per-measure category and point, not just the composite, so you can rebuild or reweight the index yourself.

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How to cite it

"The Liberty Index: All 50 States Ranked (2026)," The Liberty Tribune, https://thelibertytribune.com/trackers/liberty-index-by-state/

Sources

• public state-law references (Wikipedia, USCCA, Giffords Law Center)
• National Conference of State Legislatures
• National Right to Work Foundation & NCSL
• EdChoice
• Tax Foundation

Each measure's own page carries its full sourcing, its as-of date and its caveats: Concealed carry · Stand your ground · Right to work · Minimum wage · Income tax · School choice.