France’s top administrative court
overturned a ban on burkinis in a Mediterranean town, in a decision Friday that
should set legal precedent regarding a swimsuit crackdown that has devided the
country and provoked shock around the world.
The ruling by the Council of State Friday specifically
concerns a ban on the Muslim garment in the Riviera town of Villeneuve-Loubet,
but the binding decision is expected to impact all the 30 or so French resort
municipalities that have issued similar decrees.
The bans grew increasingly controversial as images
circulated online of some Muslim women being ordered to remove body-concealing
garments on French Riviera beaches.
Lawyers for a human rights group and a Muslim collective
challenged the legality of the ban to the top court, saying the orders infringe
basic freedoms and that mayors have overstepped their powers by telling women
what to wear on beaches.
Mayors had cited multiple reasons for the bans,
including security after a string of Islamic extremist attacks, risk to public
order, and France’s strict rules on secularism in public life.
The
Council of State ruled that, “The emotion and concerns arising from the
terrorist attacks, notably the one perpetrated in Nice on July 14, cannot
suffice to justify in law the contested prohibition measure.”
It ruled that
the mayor of Villeuneuve-Loubet overstepped his powers by enacting measures
that are not justified by “proven risks of disruptions to public order nor,
moreover, on reasons of hygiene or decency.”
“The
contested decree has thus brought a serious and manifestly illegal infringement
on basic freedoms such as freedom to come and go, freedom of conscience and
personal freedom,” the ruling reads.
Lawyer
Patrice Spinosi, representing the Human Rights League, told reporters in Paris
that women who have already received fines can protest them based on Friday’s
decision.
“It
is a decision that is meant to set legal precedent,” he said. “Today all the
ordinances taken should conform to the decision of the Council of State.
Logically the mayors should withdraw these ordinances. If not legal actions
could be taken” against those towns.
But the mayor
of the Corsican town of Sisco said he wouldn’t lift the ban he imposed after an
Aug. 13 clash on a beach.
“Here the tension is very, very, very high and I won’t
withdraw it,” Ange-Pierre Vivoni said on BFM-TV.
He
said he doesn’t know whether a woman was actually wearing a burkini the day a
clash occurred that set a group of Corsican sunbathers of North African origin
against villagers from Sisco. It took days to untangle the events leading to
the violence that many immediately assumed was over a burkini sighting.
The bans have
become a symbol of tensions around the place of Islam in secular France.
Many
officials -including Prime Minister Manuel Valls – have argued that burkinis
oppress women. But critics say the bans were feeding a racist political agenda
as campaigning for next year’s French presidential elections were kicking off.
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