The 2026 State Freedom Index: Not-So-Free-California

What makes a state free? Lower taxes? Right to work laws? Eduction options?

What makes one state freer than another state? And should we even care, because after all, we live in the United States of America.

The overall freedom ranking by the CATO Institute is a combination of personal and economic freedoms.

The index scores each state on ten categories — the four big constitutional freedoms (1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment protections, plus due process inside criminal justice) and six policy areas where states diverge sharply:

• economic freedom
• drug policy
• property rights
• religious liberty
• education choice
• regulatory burden

Each category is scored 0–10, and the ten add up to a 0–100 overall score.

The 10 freest states

The top of the table is dominated by the Mountain West and northern Plains — low-tax, light-regulation states that also tend toward permissive gun and drug laws. New Hampshire is the lone Northeastern entry, carried by the strongest economic-freedom and property-rights scores in the country.

The 10 least free states

The bottom of the table is just as regional. Eight of the ten lowest-scoring states are coastal — the Northeast corridor (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Massachusetts) plus the Pacific (Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington). These are typically high-tax, high-regulation states with restrictive firearm laws, which costs them across several categories at once.

CATO explains that in their freedom index:

Economic freedom addresses taxes, fiscal policy, and business climate, and clusters on the right side of the political spectrum. The top five states — New Hampshire (10.0), Tennessee (9.8), South Dakota (9.6), Texas (9.4), and Idaho (9.2) — are all Republican-governed.

The bottom five — New Mexico (0.0), New York (0.2), Hawaii (0.4), California (0.6), and Oregon (0.8) — are all Democratic-governed.

Personal freedom involves drug policy, criminal justice, and privacy protections, and is more mixed, CATO explains. Massachusetts has the nation’s best criminal-justice score (10.0), Oregon ties for the lead on drug policy (9.5), and Maine leads on 4th Amendment protections (9.5). These are typically blue states excelling on liberties that red states often restrict.

They even include The best states for gun rights in 2026:

Gun rights are the most polarized freedom in the index. The spread is a full 10.0 points — from Wyoming’s perfect score to New York’s 0.0. Here are the top 10 states for 2nd Amendment freedom:

California ranks at the bottom for gun rights:

47. California – 0.6/10 (F).

Here are all of California’s rankings:

CATO gives California an overall D grade and reports, “Across the hybrid multi-source index, California is below average in overall freedom, ranking #47 of 50 states with a score of 43.9/100. Its strongest areas are drug policy, 1st amendment, criminal justice, while it scores lowest in 2nd amendment, economic freedom, regulatory burden.”

California ranks among the weakest in the nation for gun rights. And with the proposed state-funded media bill awaiting Gov. Newsom’s signature or veto, the state may be creating California Pravda.

These rankings are not good, unless you are a drug user, have a big mouth and an opinion about everything, have a criminal record, are at risk for search and seizure, and have grown kids not in California’s public schools.

(Pravda, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union since 1917).