Burkini banMayors of French coastal towns refuse to rescind burkini ban despite Friday’s court ruling

Published 29 August 2016

The majority of French mayors who have issued bans on the wearing of burkini on municipal beaches  are refusing to lift the restrictions even though France’s highest administrative court on Friday ruled that prohibiting the ban would be a “serious and manifestly illegal violation of fundamental freedoms.” The burkini bans have plunged France into an intense debate about secularism, freedom of religion, and how best to help integrate Muslims into French life and culture.

The majority of French mayors who have issued bans on the wearing of burkini on municipal beaches  are refusing to lift the restrictions even though France’s highest administrative court on Friday ruled that prohibiting the ban would be a “serious and manifestly illegal violation of fundamental freedoms” (see “French court suspends Burkini ban, declaring the prohibition ‘clearly illegal’,” HSNW, 26 August 2016).

Nouvel Observateur reports that more than twenty mayors have instructed their municipal police forces to keep patrolling the beaches and stop and fine any women in full-body swimsuits at the beach.

On Friday, in what legal scholar consider to be a test case, the court suspended the burkini ban in the French Riviera town of Villeneuve-Loubet. The city council of Villeneuve-Loubet was thus obligated to abolish the ban immediately, but the mayors of other towns said the ruling did not apply to their towns.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who described the ban as “illegal and ineffective,” is expected to make an announcement today (Monday) to clarify the government’s position on the issue.

Most of the bans have been imposed by towns along the French Riviera. The mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, from Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative Les Républicains party, said he would not rescind the ban. He said Friday’s ruling “does not in any way change my conviction that ostentatious dress, whatever the religion, is a problem in the current context.” He said burkinis were “Islamist” and a sign of the “salafization of our society.”

Only two towns lifted their bans after the administrative court’s Villeneuve-Loubet ruling on Friday: Oye-Plages near Calais, which is ruled by the Socialist Party, Eze in the Alpes-Maritimes, whose mayor represents the centrist Democratic Movement. Twisn and cities whose mayor come from the conservative Les Républicains party – the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy – and from the populist Front National have announced that they would maintain the bans regardless of Friday’s court decision.

The burkini bans have plunged France into an intense debate about secularism, freedom of religion, and how best to help integrate Muslims into French life and culture.

Politicians from the more conservative political parties have generally supported the bans, while the Socialist Party is divided. Prime Minister Manuel Valls has expressed support for the bans, writing on his Facebook page that the burkini was “the affirmation of political Islam in the public space.” Valls, and other politicians on the left who support the bans, argue that prohibiting the ban is part of a campaign for equal treatment of women, and that those elements within Islam who insist on women covering themselves, treat women as second-class citizens.

Sarkozy, who lost the presidency to Francois Hollande in 2012, has made the burkini ban a major theme in his campaign, calling for a nationwide law to ban burkinis and also for banning the wearing of Muslim headscarves at universities and private companies.

His main rival for the conservative nomination, Bordeaux’s mayor Alain Juppé, struck a more moderate tone. He opposes national burkin ban, saying it would be illegal and anti-constitutional. He also called on other politicians to stop using inflammatory rhetoric to “throw oil on the fire..

Juppé instead proposed formulating what he called “a special accord” between the state and leaders of the French Muslim community to stipulate clear rules for respecting French secularism.

“It is legitimate to ask them to have a knowledge of the principles of the organization of the republican state, especially French-style secularism,” he said.