Citing “safety reasons,” Maryland’s largest school district will limit public access to what is set to be a contentious Board of Education meeting, in which the board is scheduled to address a policy that bans parents from opting their children out of “inappropriate” gender and sexuality curriculum.
“This is an attempt to stigmatize protests and it’s an attempt to stigmatize the families who are coming and showing up to show their support for restoring the opt-out option for parents,” said Ismail Royer, policy adviser for the parents’ group Coalition of Virtue. “It’s completely unnecessary for security. It’s just a way of demonizing defense.”
Coalition of Virtue planned a “Family Rights” rally outside of Tuesday’s Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) meeting, which Royer said is expected to gather hundreds of community members looking to restore the district’s opt-out policy.
The board typically enters closed session at the beginning of meetings, then opens meetings to the public, he said. Today’s meeting is limited to the board itself and “scheduled speakers, invited attendees and other guests,” according to a district statement. The meeting will be livestreamed and overflow room is limited to “position appointments, public speakers and individuals [delivering] testimony,” MCPS Director of Communications Christopher Cram told National Review.
Cram said that “public access to the meeting remains the same for scheduled public speakers, agenda speakers and other guests,” but did not specify how guests were invited, nor what safety concerns prompted the district to issue its statement.
Three families filed a lawsuit against MCPS last month, claiming that district policy violates their First Amendment religious rights and Maryland law by not providing an opt-out option for parents who object to gender and sexuality lessons.
According to the lawsuit, the district’s “Pride Storybooks” introduce pre-K and elementary school children to transgender ideology, gender transitioning, and romantic infatuation with no parental opportunity to opt out.
Royer, who also serves as director of the Religious Freedom Institute’s Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team, said the district is arbitrarily targeting the community’s right to free speech, and that the district has not cited any intelligence from law enforcement that would justify safety concerns.
“I don’t see anything in the Open Meetings Act that would justify it under these circumstances,” he said. “There have been no threats. It’s just a large crowd, and there was a large crowd at the last meeting. There are certainly people right now and within our circles who are talking about legal action against the school board. It’s completely unjustified and directed at free speech.”
Exceptions that would allow the Board of Education to close meeting attendance include “personnel discussions about particular individuals, the receipt of legal advice from the public body’s attorney, and subjects that must be kept confidential under other laws,” according to Maryland’s Open Meetings Act.
Royer expects hundreds of protesters from all faith backgrounds at the rally — mostly parents who want to ensure they can pass their values on to their children without state interference.
“This is not the environment for culture-war-type stuff, or certainly not the environment for street battles. We don’t want any of that stuff here,” he said. “We’re here to represent a very reasonable, valid point of view that is deeply grounded in our American legal and political heritage, and that is the right to conscientiously object when the state attempts to put the citizen in the position of having to choose between obeying God and obeying the state.”