Top France Court Suspends ‘Burkini’ Swimsuit Ban

The daylong conference is the latest step in creating an “Islam of France” that respects French secular values.

The court says it is legal under French law to forbid people from “invoking their religious beliefs to skirt common rules regulating relations between public authorities and private individuals”. The debate over how to balance the lifestyle choices of some Muslims and France’s concept of secularism frequently pops up, from a 2004 law banning headscarves in schools to a 2010 law forbidding face-covering veils to a still-not-resolved debate over whether schools should always offer pork-free lunches.

But the mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet, Lionnel Luca, of Sarkozy’s Les Republicains party, said it would heighten tensions.

“The burkini would obviously be part of it”, said Le Pen, who is running for president in the 2017 race.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy and other some other conservative candidates want a national law banning burkinis.

The UN has supported the court’s decision witrh spokesman Stephane Dujarric stating: “We welcome the decision by the court”.

But the ordinances in Cannes and other French towns have been widely criticized for stirring fear and intolerance.

He stuck to his guns Friday evening, saying the State Council’s ruling “does not end the debate which has been opened”.

“It’s a huge victory for human rights, because it reaffirms the rule of law when most politicians are falling in the Islamophobic trap”, he added.

He said: “French authorities must now drop the pretence that these measures do anything to protect the rights of women”.

According to the suspension, Nice’s ban had been lifted which translates into local police forces no longer being able to stop Muslim women from going to the beach or lying on the shore.

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 divided the country and provoked shock around the world.

The original ban was challenged by the Human Rights League (LDH) and Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), who took the case to the State Council. “If I rocked up on the beach wearing a diving suit and a swimming head cap, if they knew I was Muslim they would tell me to get off”, she says. But the predominant argument against them is that the burkini violates France’s century-old commitment to secularism.

A court in Nice had upheld the Villeneuve-Loubet ban this week.

But the ruling, which only applied to the ban imposed by Villeneuve-Loubet, was quickly dismissed by several other towns, including Nice, which vowed to keep the restrictions in place and continue imposing fines on women who wear the full-body swimsuit.

Ange-Pierre Vivoni had banned the burkini after an August 13 clash on a beach in Sisco.

“There’s a lot of tension here and I won’t withdraw my decree”, Sisco mayor Ange-Pierre Vivoni told BFM TV, arguing that in his Corsica town the ban would be justified on security grounds. It took days to untangle the events leading to the violence that many immediately assumed was over a burkini sighting.

“There’s been a misunderstanding about the function of the burkini and now this decision needs to be followed up with further discussion”.

One of the central issues with the burkini ban is that the clothing isn’t legally defined, opening the door to the potential questioning of women who might wear long trousers or other clothing that covers their bodies.