Lauren C. Arikan (born December 14, 1984) is an American politician who has served as a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates since 2019. She previously represented the 7th district from 2019 to 2023, afterwards being redrawn into district 7B.[1]
Arikan first got involved in politics in 2012 by becoming a member of the Board of Directors for the Maryland Friends of Midwives organization. From 2015 to 2018, she served as the chair of the Love Maryland PAC.[1] In February 2018, Arikan filed to run for the Maryland House of Delegates in District 7.[3] She won the Republican primary with 13.6 percent of the vote, coming in third place in a field of thirteen candidates.[4] She defeated Democrats Allison Berkowitz and Gordon Koerner and Green Party candidate Ryan Sullivan in the general election, receiving 23.3 percent of the vote.[5]
In the legislature
Arikan and other members of the Maryland Women's Legislative Caucus, 2019
Arikan was sworn into the Maryland House of Delegates on January 9, 2019.[1] She was assigned to the Judiciary Committee by House Speaker Michael E. Busch.[6] In 2021, she was elected to serve as vice president of the Women Legislators of Maryland caucus.[7] She left the caucus in 2022 after its members voted to elect state delegate Lesley Lopez as its new president over Arikan, who was in line to become its next president.[8] Arikan is also a member of the Maryland Freedom Caucus.[9][10]
In August 2021, Arikan filed a complaint with the Maryland State Board of Elections against Michael Steele, who had formed a 527 committee to raise money for his exploratory effort in the 2022 gubernatorial election.[11][12] Steele's campaign dismissed these allegations, calling them "completely meritless" and accusing Arikan of supporting Dan Cox in the Republican primary. Arikan denied these claims, saying that she intended to stay "completely out of the gubernatorial Republican primary".[13]
In June 2024, Arikan and three other Republican lawmakers signed onto a letter to the superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools calling for the termination of Alexa Sciuto, a LGBTQIA+ advocate who taught at Baltimore County Schools. In the letter, the legislators alleged that Sciuto made death threats toward Kit Hart, the chair of the Carroll County Moms for Liberty chapter, citing a tweet from Sciuto that read, "Officer, I swear I didn't mean to murder her" above a picture of Hart. Sciuto had made the post after Hart failed to clearly define the word "woke" during a parents' rights panel in Towson. In June 2025, Sciuto filed a defamation lawsuit against the lawmakers, multiple Moms for Liberty members, and Libs of TikTok, claiming that her tweet was rhetorical and that the lawmakers had mischaracterized it as a death threat.[14]
During debate on a bill to prohibit counties from entering into 287(g) program agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in February 2026, Arikan got into an argument with House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who repeatedly reminded Arikan to just speak about the 287(g) measure after referencing immigration enforcement bills passed in previous sessions, after which Arikan said that the "chamber feels like it's being run like a Third World dictatorship that is silencing the opinions of the minority [party]".[15] Following the floor session, she uploaded a video clip of her interactions with Peña-Melnyk online with the caption "Democrat Tyranny" and wrote a letter to the speaker in which she claimed that Peña-Melnyk was silencing her and reminding her that "Republican voices matter too". Peña-Melnyk responded to the letter in a statement to a reporter, saying that she makes "a judgment call in every moment on the House Floor with a dedication to impartiality" and that encouraging more civility in politics would "continue to be my North Star".[16]
Political positions
Education
Arikan opposes mask mandates in schools.[17][18] In August 2021, she attended an anti-mask rally outside a meeting for the Harford County school board.[19][20] During the 2021 legislative session, Arikan introduced legislation that would allow parents living in districts that do not offer full in-person instruction by Fall 2021 to apply to receive the amount the state spends per child in public school to spend on private school tuition.[21][22]
During the 2022 legislative session, Arikan opposed a bill that would create an Institute for Public Leadership at the University of Maryland.[23]
In April 2023, Arikan sent a letter to State Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury accusing the Maryland State Department of Education of hiding scores from failing scores by altering data files available on the department's website. An investigation conducted by the state inspector general found no evidence of these claims.[24]
Arikan opposed legislation that would temporarily place restrictions on when landlords could evict their tenants until April 2022, and another that would guarantee low-income tenants a right to counsel in eviction cases, saying that she would sell her rental properties if the bills were enacted, instead investing in rental property in Pennsylvania.[27][28]
In May 2024, Arikan signed onto a letter condemning the jury's guilty verdict in the Trump hush money trial, calling the ruling a "political prosecution from a kangaroo court and left-leaning prosecutor" that is turning the U.S. justice system into a "third world parody of law and order".[30]
In February 2025, Arikan defended the Trump administration's mass firing of federal employees, saying that jobs aren't "guaranteed" and changing careers was "just a part of life".[31] In November 2025, she criticized lawsuits filed by the attorney general of Maryland against the Trump administration, calling the lawsuits "politically motivated more than policy motivated" and a waste of taxpayer dollars.[32]
Arikan supports midwifery and is the founder of the Birth Circle of Baltimore.[34] In March 2022, Arikan proposed an amendment to abortion rights legislation that would ban abortion services based on the gender of the fetus. The amendment failed by a vote of 40–86.[35]
In March 2020, Arikan voted against a measure to kill legislation that would allow for liquor sales in Baltimore County on Sundays. The measure was approved by a vote of 14-4.[36]
During the 2022 legislative session, Arikan opposed legislation that would ban threats made against health officials and hospital workers, saying that she received death threats during her first session in the General Assembly but "nothing ever came of it" after reporting it to law enforcement.[37]
In February 2025, Arikan opposed a bill to repeal the prohibition of selling condoms in public school vending machines, saying that the bill is "the kind of stuff that makes swing states go red" and questioning why the bill would allow such vending machines to be installed in preschools.[38]
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