The Freedom Index is a transparent, public scoring system that grades all 50 U.S. states A through F on the constitutional right to political boycott. Every grade ties back to specific laws, court rulings, and legislative votes — and every weight is published. No black boxes.
Get updates as new states get graded, court rulings drop, and repeal efforts move forward. No spam — one email when it matters.
Each U.S. state begins the Freedom Index with a perfect score of 100, representing a state with no anti-boycott or anti-divestment legislation on the books. Points are deducted when a legislature enacts or expands legislation that restricts the right to political boycott. Points are credited back when such legislation is repealed or successfully challenged.
The system is intentionally subtractive: a state cannot earn more than 100, but it can lose enough that its raw score drops below zero — those states are labeled Severely Restricted and displayed at the 0 floor.
Every state's grade page includes a "Show the math" button that exposes the exact deduction stack — what was deducted, why, and which bill or court ruling triggered it. Click any state on the homepage map to see this in action.
Module A covers laws that require government contractors or other entities to certify they do not boycott Israel as a condition of doing business with the state. This is the original category of anti-boycott legislation — the structural baseline against which all cross-issue expansions are measured.
| Condition | Points |
|---|---|
| Any anti-BDS / Israel boycott law in force | −30 |
| Law extended to universities / academic boycotts | −10 |
| Law requires public investment or pension divestment | −10 |
| Law lost a federal constitutional challenge and was replaced rather than repealed | −15 |
| Module A maximum deduction | −65 |
| Condition | Points |
|---|---|
| Repeal bill currently filed | +2.5 |
| Full repeal of base BDS law | +30 |
| Repeal of university / academic extension | +10 |
| Repeal of investment / pension divestment requirement | +10 |
| Repeal after losing a federal constitutional challenge | +15 |
Lowering the base penalty from −40 (v1.5) to −30 (v2.0) creates proportional scoring headroom. A state with only a BDS law still drops far enough to be penalized — but the change allows Module B cross-issue expansions to register their full severity on the same scale, without pushing every multi-module state into extreme negative territory.
Module B covers laws that extend the same compelled-speech mechanism to politically targeted industries beyond Israel. This expansion is scored independently of Module A because it represents a qualitatively different act: converting a narrow foreign-policy loyalty test into a generalized mechanism for suppressing economic and political dissent.
A state with broad Module B expansions may score worse than a state with only Module A — by design. The Index treats the generalization of anti-dissent power as more severe than its targeted origin.
| Condition | Points |
|---|---|
| Law expanded to cover ESG / sustainable-investment criteria | −20 |
| Law expanded to cover the firearms industry | −15 |
| Law expanded to cover the fossil fuel / energy sector | −15 |
| Law expanded to cover any other political or consumer boycott target (per additional category, up to −20) | −10 each |
| Module B maximum deduction | −70 |
| Condition | Points |
|---|---|
| Expansion repeal bill currently filed (per active bill, up to +5 total) | +2.5 each |
| Successful repeal of ESG expansion | +20 |
| Successful repeal of firearms expansion | +15 |
| Successful repeal of fossil fuel expansion | +15 |
ESG expansions affect the broadest set of public actors — pension funds, universities, municipalities, state investment boards. They also target the widest range of political causes (climate, labor, human rights). Firearms and fossil-fuel expansions each affect a more defined industrial sector, so they receive −15.
Module C is held open. It provides a structural slot for new categories of anti-dissent legislation as they emerge and proliferate, without requiring any adjustment to existing Module A or Module B scores. This design protects the historical comparability of the Index.
When a new legislative tactic emerges in isolated states, the Index captures it as an Advisory Flag on the state's profile — visible and documented with bill citations — but not deducted from the score. A new domain becomes a scored Module only after it has been enacted in 5 or more states.
When SLAPP laws or anti-protest statutes start appearing in 3–4 states, the Index publishes a note that "these are being tracked for potential Module C activation." That threshold moment is itself a national accountability signal — and a story. The Advisory Flag turns the methodology into an ongoing public alert, not just a one-time score.
Letter grades are assigned to state scores after applying the 0–100 display floor. The grade scale is unchanged from Version 1.0.
Module A (−65) + Module B (−70) = up to −135 total. That means a state's raw score can fall as low as −35. We cap the display at 0 and label those states Severely Restricted — preserving intuitive letter-grade mapping while accurately flagging the worst-scoring states.
The tracker also displays a single national grade — a population-weighted average across all 50 states + DC. This is the headline number when people ask "how is the country doing overall?"
The formula:
Step-by-step:
Worked example (simplified, 3 states):
Why population-weighted (not flat-averaged)?
An unweighted average treats Wyoming (587K people) the same as California (39M). That would give a misleading picture of how many Americans actually live under these laws. The population-weighted score answers the more useful question: "what's the average Freedom Index score experienced by an American chosen at random?"
Current national grade: applied to today's data, the national population-weighted score lands in the C tier. Eva is reviewing whether to align this with the v1.5 default (D tier) or keep the v2.0 banding — see her Aug 6 note on the renderCounters function for context. The grade band may shift before public launch.
What changes the national grade?
Population data source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 state population estimates. Updated annually.
Arizona is the campaign's home state and the test case for restoring this right nationwide. Below is the full deduction stack — every line traces to a specific bill or court ruling. The same breakdown is available on the live site by clicking Arizona on the map and selecting "Show the math."
| Condition | Points |
|---|---|
| Anti-BDS law in force — HB 2617 (signed 2016) | −30 |
| University extension — SB 1250 (2022) reaches university contracts | −10 |
| Investment / pension divestment — SB 1250 also requires public pension funds to divest from boycotters | −10 |
| Federal court loss, replaced rather than repealed — Jordahl v. Brnovich (D. Ariz. 2018) struck down the original law; legislature passed SB 1167 (2019) as a workaround instead of repealing | −15 |
| Total Module A | −65 |
The state-level Freedom Index measures laws on the books. The State Legislator Scorecard measures who voted for them. These are separate scoring systems — they share the same A–F vocabulary, but they're computed independently.
Arizona is the first state where every sitting legislator is individually graded. We track five bills since 2016, weighted by whether they're substantive (creating law) or symbolic (expressing position).
| Bill | Year | Weight | Class |
|---|---|---|---|
| HB 2617 — original anti-BDS statute | 2016 | 1.0 | Substantive |
| SB 1167 — post-Jordahl narrowing | 2019 | 1.0 | Substantive |
| SB 1250 — university + pension expansion | 2022 | 1.0 | Substantive |
| HCM 2002 — concurrent memorial (resolution) | 2026 | 0.5 | Symbolic |
| HCR 2047 — concurrent resolution | 2026 | 0.5 | Symbolic |
| Vote | Effect on score |
|---|---|
| Y — voted FOR an anti-boycott bill | −1 × weight (penalty) |
| N — voted AGAINST an anti-boycott bill | +1 × weight (credit) |
| NV — present but did not vote | 0 (counted toward the NV-cap rule below) |
| — — not in office for that vote | Excluded entirely. No legislator is penalized for a vote they couldn't cast. |
Sum each (vote × weight) for every counted vote. Divide by total weight to produce a ratio between −1.0 and +1.0. Map the ratio to a letter grade:
If a legislator voted YES on any of the three substantive bills (HB 2617, SB 1167, SB 1250), their grade is capped at D, no matter what their ratio says. Voting YES on a real anti-boycott statute is a position you don't get to erase with later NO votes on symbolic resolutions. If they have any pro-dissent NO vote alongside the substantive Y, they get bumped to D+ as evolution credit.
If a legislator has no counted substantive votes (provisional grade) AND abstained (NV) on any tracked bill, their otherwise-A/A+ grade caps at B. The reasoning: if your record is this thin and you couldn't even take a side on the votes you were present for, that's reluctance — which doesn't deserve a top grade. A clean N/N record with no abstentions keeps the A+.
Every grade is built from public legislative records. We use multiple cross-referenced sources to ensure accuracy:
The complete authoring document: the full methodology paper, including all scoring tables, theoretical framing, and rationale sidebars. Free to reuse with attribution.
Every grade is computed from public bill data. If a bill year is off, a court ruling is missing, a scope description is outdated, or a legislator vote is misrecorded — please flag it. We acknowledge corrections within 48 hours and patch the data within 30 minutes once verified.
Email corrections to: steven@catchfiremovement.org
Include the state code, the specific data point you're correcting, and a citation (LegiScan link, court docket, or news article) so we can verify before pushing the fix.