A French court today reversed the country’s divisive so-called burkini ban, ruling the 15-odd French mayors who have banned women from wearing a full-length swimsuit to the beach had no standing to do so.
The French Council of State, the highest administrative court in the country, handed down the opinion Friday, immediately reversing the ban, which was active in at least fifteen beachside towns.
The court ruled the mayors who have enacted the ban did not have the proper authority, and though it was not part of the decision, it seems clear those mayors also lacked the proper cognitive reasoning.
“I was informed that there was a couple on one of our beaches where the wife was swimming fully dressed,” Villeneuve-Loubet mayor Lionnel Lucca told the AFP last week, explaining his thought process as if he had one: “I considered that unacceptable for hygienic reasons and unwelcome given the general situation.”
Also apparently unhygienic: Wearing a coverup to sit on the sand. Earlier this week, police in Nice forced a woman sitting on the beach with her family to remove her long-sleeved shirt while her daughter watched, crying.
Peeing in the ocean still okay though?