RUTHFULLY YOURS

Advocates say the bill promotes the separation of church and state. In reality, the law suggests that religious practice is incompatible with public service, that people of faith cannot be trusted to balance their religious beliefs and civic responsibilities, and that employees must choose between their consciences and careers. Public employees won’t be the only ones affected: If the government won’t hire someone who wears a turban or crucifix, why would a private business?

During my decade as a yarmulke-wearing government official in New York, I occasionally encountered those who viewed religious professionals through a lens that magnified their faith while obscuring their abilities.

On two separate occasions when I was in Albany for the State of the State address, senior officials approached me in the holding room for politicians and staffers off the Capitol floor, shook my hand, addressed me as “Rabbi,” and thanked me for coming to deliver the invocation. Mortified colleagues quickly corrected them.

If religiously observant employees are given the chance, eventually people will focus on the job they are doing and not the clothing they are wearing while doing it. The best way to ensure respect for different faiths and cultures is to make them well-represented in all workplaces. That means not excluding them from the workforce or forcing them to hide their identities.

The Quebec law comes at the end of a decade that has seen increasing demands across North America for religious freedom to give way when it conflicts with other rights. The new law goes a step further by demanding that religious liberty be sacrificed simply to avoid offending skeptical secularists.

Those who understand how society is enriched by the full participation of religious adherents in public life must fight back. The law already has been challenged in court, but this is fundamentally a cultural battle that requires broader resistance.

Where are the celebrities announcing that they will refuse to perform in Quebec? What about corporate leaders and their threats not to do businesses with intolerant local governments? When will leaders from other provinces and elsewhere in North America announce a ban on traveling to Quebec for official business? Where are the hashtags expressing outrage at state-sponsored discrimination and solidarity with its victims?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opposed the Quebec law: “We do not feel it is a government’s responsibility or in a government’s interest to legislate on what people should be wearing.” That’s far from a full-throated defense of religious liberty.

Ordinary Canadians and Americans also should make their voices heard. Religious liberty will wither if the bigoted assumptions behind Quebec’s actions aren’t challenged. Those who want religion stamped out of public life will be emboldened if the opposition is expressed exclusively on legal grounds. The moral basis for protecting religious rights must be front and center in this battle.

“Accommodation of religiously inspired conduct is a token of respect for, and a beacon of welcome to, those whose beliefs differ from the majority’s,” wrote Judge Frank Easterbrook of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals almost 20 years ago. “Obeisance differs from respect; to demand the former in the name of the latter is self-defeating. It is difficult for us to see why a Jew may not wear his yarmulke in court, a Sikh his turban, a Muslim woman her chador, or a Moor his fez.”

There is a long history of American leaders standing up for religious freedom across the world. Now the abuse is occurring close to home. Some two dozen candidates are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Imagine if one of them had the courage to speak up in defense of the faithful across the border.

Mr. Schick, a partner at Troutman Sanders, was a deputy attorney general in New York state (1999-2006).