As reported last week by the Army Times, Newsweek, Religion Dispatches, and numerous other news outlets, both here in the U.S. and internationally, on March 6, while attending a suicide prevention briefing at a base chapel, Sgt. Cesilia Valdovinos was forced to remove her hijab by her superior, Command Sgt. Maj. Kerstin Montoya, an egregious violation of her religious rights and a humiliating experience for a woman of the Muslim faith.
According to Sgt. Valdovinos, who has an eyewitness who has corroborated her account and has offered to submit to a polygraph, Command Sgt. Maj. Montoya pulled her arm, saying, “You come with me,” and then ordered her to remove “that,”pointing at her hijab. Valdovinos asked Montoya if she was allowed to give that order, and when Montoya responded that she was, Valdovinos, not wanting to get in trouble for disrespecting a superior, removed the outer part of her hijab, leaving the undercap, which contained her hair. Command Sgt. Maj. Montoya then said “no, all the way off” and when Valdovinos removed the undercap told her to turn around. After putting her hijab back on, Montoya said to Valdovinos, “mmhmm” and to “get out of here.”
Nothing was said about Valdovinos’s hair at the time of the incident. It was only after Valdovinos, on the advice of a Muslim chaplain, contacted the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) that Fort Carson officials issued the following statement claiming that the reason Command Sgt. Maj. Montoya demanded that Valdovinos’s hair was “visibly out of regulation.”
“According to sources who were present, Sgt. Valdovinos’ hair was visibly out of regulation…. At no time did the senior non-commissioned officer touch Sgt. Valdovinos. The senior NCO did ask the Soldier to remove her hijab in order to verify whether or not her hair was within regulation. Upon removing the hijab, the Soldier’s leadership discovered that Sgt. Valdovinos’ hair was completely down, which is not allowed while in uniform. The senior NCO told Sgt. Valdovinos to put her hair back in regulation and to not let it happen again.”
But, as Paul Rosenberg at Religion Dispatches points out, if Sgt. Valdovinos’s hair were already “visibly out of regulation” before she removed her hijab, there would have been no need for Command Sgt. Maj. Montoya to order Valdovinos to remove her hijab to see whether or not her hair was out of regulation.
According to Sgt. Valdovinos and her eyewitness, her hair was not visibly out of regulation until she was forced to remove her hijab, which caused her hair to fall down and become out of regulation.
Unless Command Sgt. Maj. Montoya has x-ray vision, she would not have been able to see Sgt. Valdovinos’s hair under her hijab.
According to MRFF president Mikey Weinstein:
“It appears to be a case of pure anti-Muslim harassment. They’re facing a formal EEO complaint. This was their chance to do the right thing. And if they don’t, among other things, we will file a formal complaint with the US Civil Rights Commission in Washington. We will take it out of DOD’s hands.”