PARIS (Reuters) – The judge in chambers of the Council of State, seized by the town hall of Grenoble (Isère), confirmed on Tuesday the suspension of the internal regulations of the swimming pools of the municipality authorizing the wearing of the “burkini”.
Last May, the city of Grenoble, whose mayor is the ecologist Eric Piolle, adopted new internal regulations for the four municipal swimming pools it manages, granting the possibility of wearing bathing suits covering more of the body. , like the “burkini” that some Muslim women wear.
This provision had been rejected for the first time by the judge in chambers of the administrative court of Grenoble on May 25 at the request of the prefect of Isère. The municipality appealed to the Council of State, an appeal rejected on Tuesday by the highest French administrative court.
In his order, the summary judge of the Council of State considers that “contrary to the objective displayed by the city of Grenoble, the adaptation of the internal regulations of its municipal swimming pools was only intended to authorize the wearing of the ‘burkini’ in order to satisfy a claim of a religious nature and, to do so, derogated, for a category of users, from the common rule, enacted for reasons of hygiene and safety, of wearing bathing suits close to the body”.
“The new rules of procedure for the municipal swimming pools of Grenoble affect the respect by other users of common law rules that are too different, and therefore the proper functioning of the public service, and undermines the equal treatment of users, so that the neutrality of the public service is compromised”, he adds.
The town hall of Grenoble “took note” of this decision, while regretting that the Council of State “lends intentions to it that it does not have”.
“In line with the decisions of the Defender of Rights, the objective of the municipality of Grenoble is to allow equal access for users to the public service of swimming pools with the sole regard to the rules of hygiene and safety without discrimination” , assures the Commune in a statement sent to Reuters.
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, conversely welcomed this decision on Twitter, judging that the “communitarianism of Éric Piolle” had been “definitively sanctioned by the Council of State” in “a victory for the ‘separatism’ law, for secularism and beyond, for the whole Republic”.
(Written by Matthieu Protard, with contributions from Juliette Jabkhiro, edited by Kate Entringer and Tangi Salaün)