What to Know: 

• The scorecard measures state vulnerability to federal agency influence, not overall government performance.
• Tennessee and Utah lead the 2025 rankings, while Montana records the lowest score.
• Party control alone does not explain the rankings because institutional guardrails vary across states.
• Oklahoma, Nebraska, and North Carolina rose after adopting specific oversight and planning reforms.
• Campaigns can use the scorecard to identify missing guardrails and explain their local consequences.

Federalism is the constitutional division of authority between national and state governments. Disputes often concern who can commit a state, interpret federal conditions, and change policy when grants, guidance, or agency rules are involved.

Published by State Policy Network’s Center for Practical Federalism, the 2025 Federalism Scorecard evaluates how vulnerable states are to influence by federal agency officials. Under this framework, higher scores reflect stronger elected oversight of state agencies and greater visibility into state dealings with federal agencies.

This is not a general ranking of state performance, public services, economic outcomes, or quality of life. It measures a narrower governance question: whether legal and procedural guardrails keep major administrative decisions visible to governors, legislators, and the public before commitments become difficult to reverse.

What the Scorecard Measures

The scorecard evaluates two connected layers of governance. One concerns whether elected officials can supervise state agencies. The other concerns whether those officials can see and control how state agencies interact with federal grants, guidance, and implementation requirements.

• Internal governance: Dedicated oversight committees, limits on judicial deference, restrictions on agency lobbying, review of significant regulations, independent review boards, citizen remedies, null-and-void statutes, and legislative subpoena powers.
• State–federal interface: Elected review of federal grants, grant-process exemptions, contingency planning, cost estimates, guidance transparency, oversight of implementation plans, state-agency lobbying, and the share of state revenue coming from federal funds.

Variables carry different weights and address different vulnerabilities. A high score does not mean a state accepts less federal money or governs better overall. It means the framework credits that state with stronger visibility, review, or remedies around commitments influenced by federal agencies.

Methodology changed in 2025. Null and Void Statutes and Legislative Subpoena Power were added. Cost-Benefit Analysis of Regulations, Legislative Resources, and Balanced Emergency Powers were removed because outside organizations stopped maintaining current data and the variables carried too little weight to justify rebuilding those datasets independently.

Some protections remain rare. Tennessee is the only state currently credited with guaranteeing citizens an opportunity to seek injunctive relief against harmful state-agency actions.

The official report describes the score as an index of vulnerability to federal pressure rather than a general best-to-worst state ranking. It also explains the variable changes and Tennessee’s unique injunctive-relief provision.

2025 at a Glance: Leaders, Laggards, and Movers

Screenshot from State Policy Network Federalism Scorecard 2025

At the other end, Illinois scored −4.55, California −6.12, Mississippi −9.95, Alabama −10.62, and Montana −13.56. Lower scores indicate thinner guardrails within this framework, not a broader judgment about each state’s overall performance.

What Moved the Biggest Climbers

Oklahoma, Nebraska, and North Carolina posted some of the largest rank gains after adopting specific legal and procedural reforms.

Oklahoma moved from #40 to #14 after adopting a REINS statute and requiring agencies to notify the legislature about certain federal guidance. Nebraska rose from #35 to #12 after adopting REINS-style review and requiring contingency plans for the loss of federal funds. North Carolina climbed from #32 to #19 after adopting a REINS statute that strengthened legislative oversight of major rules.

These examples show why the scorecard is more useful as a reform map than as a trophy case. Rank changes followed identifiable changes in oversight, notification, and planning rather than a general shift in ideology or government spending.

Does Vulnerability Track With Partisanship?

Party control affects reform priorities, but it does not explain the rankings by itself. The scorecard’s party-control comparison shows that among the top 10 states, seven had Republican trifectas, two had Democratic trifectas, and one had divided control. The bottom 10 were evenly split between five Republican trifectas and five Democratic trifectas.

That distribution points back to institutional history. Some states codified legislative review, grant oversight, or guidance disclosure years ago, while others continue to rely on informal practices or executive discretion. Recent federalism reforms were adopted mostly by Republican-led states, but weak guardrails appear under both parties.

For campaigns and nonprofits, the most useful argument is therefore about mechanisms rather than labels. Publishing grant terms, disclosing federal guidance, reviewing high-impact rules, and creating workable remedies give voters concrete standards for accountability without turning the score into a simple partisan attack line.

Swing States Through a Federalism Lens

Competitive states make these procedural differences politically important because close margins leave little tolerance for surprise costs, unexplained rule changes, or delayed implementation. Federal grants can create matching requirements, staffing burdens, technology costs, reporting duties, and maintenance obligations that become visible only after an agency has committed.

Different States Have Different Missing Guardrails

A state-by-state review of swing-state guardrails shows that similar political environments can contain different procedural weaknesses. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have meaningful internal review tools but thinner federal-facing grant and guidance visibility. North Carolina has REINS-style review for major rules while broad grant notice and guidance publication remain weaker.

Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada also show uneven combinations of committee oversight, grant notice, cost accounting, guidance publication, and contingency planning. The strategic point is not to label every swing state as strong or weak. It is to identify which process is most likely to fail when federal conditions or funding change.

This lens gives campaigns three practical uses:

• Anticipate friction. Identify where grants, guidance, or rules can impose costs before elected officials and local stakeholders see the complete terms.
• Target persuasion. Connect procedural gaps to the people who experience them, including school districts, local governments, employers, healthcare providers, and regulated businesses.
• Frame reform. Explain how one specific change improves notice, cost visibility, legislative authority, or accountability instead of relying on the overall score alone.

What the Scorecard Measures Directly and What Context Explains

The scorecard directly measures the share of state revenue coming from federal sources, but it does not separately score a state’s industrial mix, population age, Medicaid enrollment, disaster exposure, tourism economy, or university system. Those factors can help explain why federal conditions matter differently across states, but they are contextual analysis rather than official scorecard variables.

Image by DALL-E illustration

Direct Scorecard Variables

Direct measures include federal-grant oversight, exemptions from grant review, contingency planning, federal-grant cost accounting, guidance transparency, oversight of Medicaid and Clean Air Act implementation plans, state-agency lobbying, and federal revenue share.

Context Beyond the Index

Campaign Now’s broader analysis can still use economic structure, program participation, demographics, and geography to explain where federal obligations are likely to become politically visible. That interpretation must be presented as context added to the scorecard rather than part of the official scoring formula.

• Economic structure: Energy, defense, agriculture, tourism, and universities can change how frequently state institutions interact with federal programs.
• Programs and demographics: Medicaid participation, education systems, population growth, and aging populations can change the scale of federal obligations.
• Geography and risk: Disasters, infrastructure demands, environmental requirements, and emergency aid can increase the importance of clear federal-state processes.

Institutional safeguards such as grant review, guidance disclosure, cost accounting, and rule oversight belong inside the scorecard itself. Economic, demographic, and geographic conditions help explain why those safeguards may matter more in one state than another.

How Campaigns & Nonprofits Can Use This

Treat the scorecard as a diagnostic framework rather than a leaderboard. Start with the overall score, then move immediately to the specific variable creating the local governance problem.

Use One Missing Guardrail at a Time

1. Identify the missing guardrail. Determine whether the weakness involves grant review, guidance publication, cost accounting, rule oversight, contingency planning, or citizen remedies.
2. Identify the affected constituency. Find the schools, local governments, businesses, healthcare providers, taxpayers, or community organizations that experience the consequences.
3. Translate the process gap into a local impact. Explain the delayed timeline, unexpected cost, sudden rule change, or unclear responsibility created by the missing safeguard.
4. Define one specific reform. Propose a clear notice requirement, approval threshold, cost sheet, disclosure rule, review checkpoint, or legal remedy.
5. Track adoption and implementation. A statute matters only when agencies, governors, and legislatures use it consistently.
6. Avoid using the overall score as a partisan attack line. Credibility comes from explaining the mechanism and consequence, not simply labeling a state as good or bad.

Wrap Up

The 2025 Federalism Scorecard offers a dated snapshot of how states structure oversight of agencies and federal engagement. It does not measure overall state success, public-service quality, economic performance, or whether leaders use every available tool effectively. It shows where legal and procedural guardrails are stronger or weaker under the Center for Practical Federalism’s framework.

The clearest movement in the 2025 rankings came from specific reforms. Legislative review of major rules, notice and approval for federal grants, guidance transparency, contingency planning, cost visibility, subpoena authority, and citizen remedies can shift who sees and controls a commitment before it hardens into policy.

For campaigns and nonprofits, the lasting value is diagnostic. A score can identify where to look, but the persuasive case comes from explaining the missing guardrail, the local consequence, and the reform that would make authority more visible and accountable. Used that way, the scorecard becomes a practical map of governance rather than a partisan ranking.