RFI’s Ismail Royer Testifies at White House Religious Liberty Commission Hearing on Medical Conscience Rights

March 17, 2026, Washington, D.C. – The Religious Freedom Institute’s (RFI) Ismail Royer testified yesterday at a hearing of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission (RLC). The RLC was established by President Trump under Executive Order 14291 and is tasked with, among other objectives, “highlighting current threats to religious liberty and developing strategies to preserve and enhance protections for future generations.”

A member of the RLC’s Advisory Board of Lay Leaders, Royer was invited to speak on a panel highlighting pernicious challenges to the protection of life in the field of medicine today. Specifically, the Commission requested that he focus his remarks on challenges confronting Muslim healthcare professionals. Royer commented on growing concerns among Muslim practitioners regarding the legalization of physician assisted suicide in multiple states as well as the promulgation of increasingly troubling medical standards concerning end of life care in the United States more broadly.

During his oral testimony, Royer noted:

An estimated five percent of the physician workforce [in America] are Muslims. For a significant number of them, Islam inspires and shapes their approach to their profession…and for this reason [they] may encounter ethical dilemmas in the course of their training and employment.

“There is a duty upon each one of us,” Royer continued, “to treat one another justly and to protect one another from harm, [which] is the most fundamental axiom of Islamic sacred law and ethics.” Unfortunately, however, as Royer further explained:

In the contemporary, secular medical profession, the ethical system of personal autonomy has displaced traditional ethics. And in this new hierarchy of goods, respect for human dignity and the duty to do no harm must now give way if it inconveniences in the slightest personal autonomy. As a result of this fundamental contradiction between the ethics of human dignity and the ethics of personal autonomy, there are a number of areas in the medical field in which American-Muslim healthcare professionals may experience severe crises of conscience…[including] the rising trend of states passing laws permitting physician assisted suicide [which may also] open the door to legalizing full blown euthanasia, as it has in Canada.

Royer’s written testimony covers in much greater detail this and other end of life issues and related religious freedom threats.

Sixteen witnesses addressed the Commission during yesterday’s hearing, including: the Honorable Brian Christine, Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Most Reverend Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco; and Ms. Valerie Kloosterman, a physician assistant who was fired by the University of Michigan Health system for serving her patients in accord with the highest standards of care and her deeply held convictions as to the natural, God-given differences between men and women. RFI defended Kloosterman in an amicus brief filed on her behalf in federal appeals court and public commentary on her case (here, here, and here).

Since 2020, RFI has helped to lead the Medical Conscience Rights Initiative (MCRI). A joint effort with Alliance Defending Freedom and Christ Medicus Foundation, MCRI equips state leaders to understand why defending religious freedom in healthcare is so important, and urges them to defend it in state law.

Read Royer’s written testimony here.

Watch the hearing here (Royer’s testimony begins around 03:25:36), or here on C-SPAN (Royer’s testimony begins around 15:28).

The Religious Freedom Institute (RFI) works to secure religious freedom for everyone, everywhere. RFI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C.