CEA ACTION · LEGISLATIVE INTELLIGENCE
BBI Methodology
How CEA Action evaluates legislation and produces a Biblical Business Index score.
THE BIBLICAL BUSINESS INDEX
What the BBI Is and What It Measures
The Biblical Business Index (BBI) is CEA's proprietary framework for evaluating legislation through a biblical worldview and measuring its impact on the freedoms Christian employers need to operate according to their faith and stewardship responsibilities.
Every bill evaluated by CEA receives a directional BBI score ranging from -100 to +100.
A positive score indicates that legislation protects or expands one or more of CEA's Five Freedoms. A negative score indicates that legislation restricts or threatens those freedoms. A score near zero generally reflects limited impact or legislation with competing positive and negative effects.
The BBI is not a measure of popularity, political party, sponsorship, or likelihood of passage. It is a principled assessment of how legislation affects Christian employers, their employees, their organizations, and their ability to operate faithfully and responsibly.
THE FRAMEWORK
The Five Freedoms
Every bill is evaluated across five areas of freedom that form the foundation of the BBI.
First Freedom
The ability of Christian employers and organizations to operate according to sincerely held religious beliefs without being forced by government to violate conscience, abandon religious standards, or surrender protections for religious exercise.
Includes: religious liberty, conscience protections, religious hiring, faith-based organizations, federal funding conditions, and government mandates that conflict with religious conviction.
Economic Freedom
The ability of employers, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, churches, and individuals to steward financial resources, access capital, invest, save, transact, and participate in the economy without unnecessary government interference.
Includes: taxation, financial regulation, small-business regulation, banking access, retirement policy, digital assets, financial privacy, and regulatory costs.
Healthcare Freedom
The ability of employers and individuals to make healthcare and health-benefit decisions consistent with conscience, affordability, competition, and individual choice.
Includes: employer-sponsored health plans, ERISA, PBMs, healthcare mandates, association health plans, self-insurance, health savings accounts, conscience-sensitive coverage requirements, and government expansion into private healthcare markets.
Workforce Freedom
The ability of employers and employees to establish lawful, voluntary working relationships without unnecessary federal interference in hiring, compensation, scheduling, benefits, workplace structure, or worker classification.
Includes: independent contractors, franchising, joint-employer standards, labor relations, wage policy, paid leave, workplace flexibility, artificial intelligence in employment, and other employment mandates.
Operational Freedom
The ability of an employer to manage the day-to-day operations of an organization without disproportionate regulatory, administrative, reporting, or compliance burdens.
Includes: federal mandates, regulatory authority, reporting requirements, data and privacy obligations, artificial-intelligence regulation, federal-contractor requirements, litigation exposure, and compliance costs.
THE FORMULA
How the BBI Score Is Calculated
Each of the Five Freedoms receives an independent score ranging from -20 to +20. The five scores are added together to produce the bill's overall BBI score.
BBI FORMULA
BBI = First Freedom + Economic Freedom + Healthcare Freedom + Workforce Freedom + Operational Freedom
A positive score means the legislation, on balance, protects or expands freedom. A negative score means it restricts or threatens freedom.
THE ANALYTICAL TOOLS
Four Impact Tests
CEA uses four impact tests to determine the appropriate score within each Freedom. These tests inform the score assigned to each Five Freedom. They are not separately added to the BBI total.
Magnitude
How significant is the impact?
CEA considers whether the legislation creates a minor change, a meaningful new right or obligation, a major shift in employer authority, or a structural change to the relationship between government and employers.
Breadth
How many employers are affected?
A requirement affecting a narrow category of large employers is different from a mandate reaching churches, nonprofits, small businesses, sole proprietors, or employers with only a handful of employees. The broader the impact, the greater the potential BBI significance.
Permanence
How lasting is the change?
CEA considers whether legislation creates a temporary program, modifies an agency rule, establishes permanent statutory rights or obligations, or fundamentally changes federal policy. More permanent and difficult-to-reverse changes receive greater weight.
Fiscal & Compliance Impact
What will the legislation require employers to spend, administer, report, or risk?
CEA examines direct financial costs as well as administrative burdens, legal exposure, reporting obligations, compliance systems, benefit costs, litigation risks, and potential economic benefits.
These four tests help determine the score assigned to each of the Five Freedoms. The five Freedom scores are then combined to produce the overall BBI score.
INTERPRETING THE SCORE
Understanding the Score
CEA uses the following general ranges when interpreting a bill's overall impact. These ranges are interpretive guides, not automatic policy positions.
WHEN BILLS MOVE IN MULTIPLE DIRECTIONS
Mixed-Impact Legislation
Legislation does not always move every freedom in the same direction.
A bill may strengthen one freedom while creating significant concerns under another. For example, legislation could increase economic flexibility while imposing substantial new operational requirements.
CEA therefore examines both the overall BBI score and the individual Five Freedom scores.
When legislation has substantial positive and negative effects across different Freedoms, CEA identifies it as a mixed-impact bill so that the composite score does not obscure important policy tradeoffs.
THREE SEPARATE JUDGMENTS
BBI Score, CEA Position, and Priority Are Different
Three separate judgments appear in the CEA Legislative Tracker. These measures are intentionally separate.
BBI Score
How does this legislation affect the Five Freedoms?
A directional score from -100 to +100 measuring the bill's net impact on employer freedoms.
CEA Position
What is CEA's policy position on the legislation?
Positions may include Strong Support, Support, Support with Amendments, Support in Principle, Monitor, Oppose as Drafted, Oppose, or Strong Oppose.
Priority
How important is this legislation to CEA's policy and advocacy work right now?
Priority is classified as Critical, High, or Watch.
EXAMPLES
THE FULL PLATFORM
The BBI Is a Two-Part System
The Biblical Business Index operates across two platforms, each serving a distinct function in CEA's policy intelligence work. Together they give Christian employers a complete picture: how lawmakers have voted in the past, and what legislation means for their freedoms right now.
LAWMAKER SCORECARD
bbindex.org
The BBI Lawmaker Scorecard ranks more than 8,000 federal and state legislators based on their actual voting records, evaluated through the Five Freedoms framework. It answers the question: How has this lawmaker voted when it comes to faith, freedom, and biblical business principles?
- Congressional and state legislative rankings
- Voting history scored by Five Freedom category
- Biblical references tied to each bill position
- State-by-state policy environment analysis
ACTIVE LEGISLATION
CEA Action Bill Tracker
The CEA Action Legislative Tracker applies the BBI methodology to current and emerging legislation in Congress. It answers the question: What is being considered right now, and what does it mean for Christian employers?
- BBI scores assigned to active federal bills
- CEA policy position on each piece of legislation
- Priority classification (Critical, High, Watch)
- Organized by Five Freedom category
Both platforms are built on the same Five Freedoms framework and the same BBI scoring methodology described on this page.
THE STANDARD
A Principled, Not Partisan, Measure
The BBI does not score legislation according to which political party introduced it, whether a bill is considered conservative or progressive, or whether it is likely to pass.
CEA evaluates the substance of the legislation. The central question is:
Does this legislation protect or restrict the ability of Christian employers to exercise faith, steward resources, provide healthcare, build healthy workplaces, and operate their organizations responsibly and freely?
The Biblical Business Index provides a consistent framework for answering that question across the thousands of legislative proposals introduced in Congress and state legislatures.