Critics say the anti-burkini crusade reflects a far-right, anti-Muslim agenda that could be a vote-winner in France’s 2017 presidential election. The judges said there was no such risk in the case before the court concerning Villeneuve-Loubet, one of around 30 towns to have introduced the bans.
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“I will be the President that re-establishes the authority of the state”, Mr. Sarkozy told supporters packing a sports hall in Chateaurenard.
Many conservatives and right-wing French supported the burkini ban, with some calling for it to be extended nationwide, while civil liberties campaigners, feminists and Muslims opposed it.
Though it only applies to the French Riviera town, the ruling from the State Council is expected to set a legal precedent for the 26 towns where the ban has been in place.
Will the French towns refund the women who have been ticketed immediately, or will they drag out their proceedings in the courts?
He said some of the women the group had spoken to no longer saw the point of going to the beach, and did not want to be humiliated in front of their children.
France already became the first European country to ban wearing burqas in public in 2011.
“Beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation, when France and places of worship are now the target of terrorist attacks, is liable to create risks of disrupting public order”, his order said.
Razzy Hammadi, the party spokesman, said he hoped it would “put an end to this nasty controversy”.
“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.
John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Europe Director, said in a statement Friday: “By overturning a discriminatory ban that is fuelled by and is fuelling prejudice and intolerance, today’s decision has drawn an important line in the sand”.
In the past few days, outrage over the ban spread rapidly online after photos emerged of police on a beach in Nice forcing a woman to remove her clothing.
One of the women who received a fine for covering her hair was Siam, 34, who says she was wearing hijab – not a burkini – with leggings and a tunic in Cannes.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the FN, described the court’s ruling as “obviously regrettable but not surprising”.
Human rights groups welcomed the court’s move on Friday.
The “burkini bans” do not actually mention the garment specifically, but rather stipulate that beachwear must be “appropriate”, and “respectful of good morals and of secularism”.
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However, the ban - like France’s previous bans on religious clothing in public schools colloquially called the “headscarf ban” - this policy specifically targeted Muslim women.
