Posted on 02/01/2021 at 4:35 p.m.
Handicap. A former officer in Deauville wins her case. The administrative justice has just condemned the Ministry of the Interior which had refused that his colleagues offer him days off to take care of his son suffering from severe autism.
In February 2019, the administrative court of Caen dismissed the gendarme. (AFP photo)
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The Nantes administrative court of appeal ruled in favor of a former officer of the Deauville gendarmerie company who criticized her superiors for having opposed the granting, by her colleagues, of several days of leave to take care of her. severely disabled son. The applicant had been dismissed in February 2019 by the administrative court of Caen despite the contrary opinion of the public rapporteur. The judges had estimated that “The benefit of donations of days (…) does not appear necessary” in the case of the military, since affected in Yvelines.
At the time of the events, in January 2016, the mother still had 42.5 days of leave. Three months earlier, several of her colleagues had spontaneously decided to offer her additional days of rest so that she could be as close as possible to her son, suffering from a severe autism requiring daily and reinforced support throughout the year.
Since May 2015, soldiers have been able to benefit from the provisions of the “Mathys law”, which governs the donation of RTT in favor of people taking care of a loved one suffering from “an illness, a handicap or the victim of a particularly serious accident making a sustained presence essential ”. The State was opposed to her benefiting from all the days offered. The Minister of the Interior considered that the officer had already received permission grants from her colleagues, equivalent to 17 days for the year 2015. The same year, the regional commander of the Lower Normandy gendarmerie to him had also granted five days of permission grants.
“Convoluted explanations” from the Ministry of the Interior
The state had also taken into account the forty days of leave she still had for the following year. However, legally, as the Nantes judges noted, the benefit of these donations is not conditional on the exhaustion of the applicant’s permission rights. Also, the State “does not assert any consideration linked to the necessities or to the interest of the service which would oppose the request of the interested party”, wrote the judges, for whom the minister made “an erroneous application” of the law. The judgment of first instance was thus annulled, as well as the refusal decision of the Ministry of the Interior. The losing party, the State was ordered to pay the gendarme the sum of 1,200 € for its court costs.
As a reminder, during the hearing in January 2019 in Caen, the public rapporteur – whose opinions are generally followed by the court – had already suggested that the applicant be in favor. In his conclusions, the magistrate was particularly surprised at the “convoluted explanations” of the Ministry of the Interior to justify his decision, which went against a “spontaneous solidarity between agents”. In the eyes of the magistrate, the absence of the officer would have had no impact on the functioning of the service. His absence “was quite conceivable and envisaged”, concluded the public rapporteur, before proposing to the administrative court to annul the ministerial decision at the heart of the dispute.
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