The Council of State closed the door to burkinis in municipal swimming pools by giving reason on Tuesday to the prefecture of Isère which opposed a new controversial provision of the commune of Grenoble.
In its decision, the highest administrative court confirmed the decision rendered at the end of May by the administrative court of Grenoble, considering that the new swimming pool regulations imposed by the Grenoble municipality “only aimed to authorize the wearing of the burkini in order to satisfy a claim of a religious nature”.
“The very targeted derogation made, to satisfy a religious claim, to the common law rules for wearing close-fitting bathing suits enacted for health and safety reasons, is likely to affect the proper functioning of the public service and equal treatment of users in conditions undermining the principle of neutrality of public services”, explains the Council of State in a press release.
Éric Piolle on the burkini: “In practice, fundamentalist Islamists do not go to the swimming pool at all”
A national controversy
The case began in mid-May, with the adoption by the Grenoble city council – by a narrow majority and against a backdrop of national controversy – of new regulations for the city’s swimming pools authorizing, without naming it, the burkini .
The Ministry of the Interior, via the prefecture of Isère, had then filed a “secular referral”, a procedure resulting from the law against “separatism” which allows the prefects to seize the administrative judge of an act of a local authority considered contrary to the principles of secularism.
The administrative court had given them reason, the city of Grenoble appealed and the case had been examined in hearing by the Council of State last week.
The new regulations, which also allowed topless bathing for women and anti-UV swimsuits for all, had triggered a national political storm, as regularly on subjects related to Islamic culture (veil, burkini, halal food) and to its relationship to secularism in France.
The right and the extreme right had in particular again asked for more “supervision” of the wearing of the burkini via a law.