Burkini bans ruled to violate freedoms
France’s top administrative court on Saturday overturned a ban on burkinis in a Mediterranean beach resort, effectively meaning towns can no longer issue bans on the swimsuits that have divided the country and brought world attention to its fraught relationship with Muslims.
The ruling by the Council of State 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 bodyconcealing 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 on basic freedoms and that mayors have overstepped their powers by telling women what to wear on beaches.
Despite the court victory, the debate was unlikely to go away. Prime Minister Manual Valls, who supported the bans, called the debate ‘‘fundamental’’ for secular France, where religious displays are unwelcome in the public space.
Valls wrote on his Facebook page that denouncing the burkini ‘‘in no way puts into question individual freedom’’ and is really about denouncing ‘‘fatal, retrograde Islamism’’. The burkini, he wrote, ‘‘is the affirmation of political Islam in the public space’’.
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 Villeneuve-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 read.
Lawyer Patrice Spinosi, representing the Human Rights League, said that women who have already received fines can protest them based on Saturday’s decision. He said the group plans to ask all French mayors who banned burkinis to withdraw their orders and, if they refuse to do so, he will systematically take each case to court.
‘‘It is a decision that is meant to set legal precedent,’’ Spinosi 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.’’
The head of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, the other group that appealed to the top court, hailed the decision but lamented that the crackdown ‘‘will remain engraved in the history of our country’’.
‘‘One cannot take back the harm which was caused, humiliations that were provoked,’’ Marwan Muhammad said outside the court.
The bans have become a symbol of tensions around the place of Islam in secular France and the heated debate has brought about divisions even among cabinet ministers.