SARASOTA, Fla. – Florida has added more top rankings to its growing list of accolades.
Speaking at a news conference Monday at New College Florida in Sarasota, Gov. Ron DeSantis highlighted the state’s continued success in various areas: higher education, economy, education freedom, entrepreneurship, retirement, and vacation destination.
The state was recently named the top state in the nation for protecting religious freedom by the First Liberty Institute’s Center for Religion, Culture and Democracy.
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According to DeSantis, the new religious liberty ranking recognizes Florida’s strong legal protections for religious freedom in public law. The index evaluates factors such as religious exemptions, protections for religious organizations and schools, and the freedom for individuals to live out their faith in both private and public life.
“If you go back to the founding of our country, religious liberty was basically the first freedom that the Founding Fathers sought to protect,” said DeSantis. “And of course, religious freedom was part of the reason people even settled in the American colonies. To begin with, this is something that is central to the American experiment and central to our way of life."
Recently, the U.S. News & World Report ranked Florida as having the number one economy in the nation as well as higher education.
For the third year in a row, CNBC rated Florida’s economy number one among all 50 states.