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.
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“Beyond the political polemic, the Council of State has declared what the law is”.
He also said women who have already received fines can protest them based on today’s decision.
Ruling Socialists are also divided, with Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem and Health Minister Marisol Touraine concerned over the “drift” in the local orders, while Prime Minister Manuel Valls backed the mayors.
Ange-Pierre Vivoni, Socialist mayor of the Corsican town of Sisco, said his burkini ban would remain “for the safety of property and people in the town because I risked having deaths on my hands”. “We reject this vision of France and we call women and men of this country to reject it”.
While rulings by the Council of State do set precedents, several mayors said they would not suspend their own bans and rights groups said they would bring them to courts, meaning more lawsuits are expected.
The headscarf was banned from schools in 2004.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy and other some other conservative candidates want a national law banning burkinis.
But critics of the ruling say the issue is far from settled. Calling the ban “clearly illegal”, the judgment ruled that the restricting regulation “breached the fundamental freedoms to come and go, the freedom of beliefs and individual freedom”. The Council of State would still have the final word.
BuzzFeed’s Aisha Gani interviewed a woman wearing a burkini on the beach in Nice, and she said, “I booked a holiday to Nice to change our common holiday destination of Algeria”.
An anti-burkini law in France would fuel tensions between communities and would be unconstitutional, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Sunday.
The burkini and the decisions to ban wearing them on beaches has become the focus of spirited global debates over womens rights, assimilation and secularism.
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Critics of the bans have said they unfairly targeted Muslims in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks in France and elsewhere in Europe.
