To the Editor:

In “When Putting On a Head Scarf Is All It Takes to Get Fired” (news article, March 8), you featured the stories of four women — Muslim, Sikh, Jewish and Catholic — persecuted for their faith by the ban on religious garb for government employees, and in other professional settings, in Quebec.

Forcing these women to make an impossible choice between their faith and their livelihood is an affront to human dignity. Governments have no business forcing citizens to hide or abandon their faith in some ill-conceived effort to create a “neutral” state in which people are all the same.

Thankfully, laws in the United States protect our diversity and allow women (and men!) to remain true both to their religious beliefs and their desire to serve their communities. Our laws protect religious exercise and expression, even for government workers.

The Quebec article reminds us of what our world would look like without such protections. Women worried they’ll be blocked from promotions? Forced to put dreams of a career as a prosecutor aside? Moving across the country to flee discrimination? That sounds like a pre-suffrage existence, in which women’s inalienable political rights were denied.