“It’s a good decision. A very satisfactory first step”, rejoices Me Guillaume Delarue, lawyer for the sports association, Le Blanc-Mesnil Sport Judo (BMSJ), after having learned of the judgment of the administrative court opposing him to the commune of Blanc-Mesnil.
The council of the BMSJ suspects, rightly, that the city of Blanc-Mesnil will not stay on this legal setback. In fact, former mayor Thierry Meignen (Libres!), leader of the municipal majority, has already announced the town’s course of action: “The liars deceived the TA judges, they will have much more difficulties on appeal”, he says, refusing to comment further. More specifically, it is before the Court of Cassation that the two parties should meet.
The judo club had seized the court of Montreuil, in summary in mid-October. He criticized the municipality for having drastically reduced its time slots “since it loses approximately more than seven hours compared to the 2020-2021 sports season, going from 3 p.m. to 8:10 a.m. In 2019-2020, she benefited from 34h30”, according to the court report.
The plaintiffs had argued that the mayor’s decision “significantly threatened the continuation of its activity as well as its survival, by preventing it from being able to offer courses to all its members”, while at the same time, “the number of ‘membership has continued to increase, with 110 licensees and currently 170 members, the number of licensees not yet stabilizing’.
The court questions the legal validity of municipal decisions
To justify the reduction of time slots, the municipality had objected in particular that “the premises made available to the club are perfectly suited to the practice of judo and allow it to carry out its activities in satisfactory conditions”.
There was an urgent need to rule, say the magistrates, who demand that a “suspension of an administrative act be pronounced, when the execution of it seriously and immediately undermines a public interest”.
According to the administrative court, “it does not appear from the documents in the file and from the debates [que] the reasons put forward by the municipality of Blanc-Mesnil are such as to justify the measures of strong restriction of the time slots for the use of the sports equipment allocated to the applicant association, particularly when the evolution of the number of its members is on the increase and that the practical necessities invoked by the municipality (…) are not sufficiently established. »
The administrative court goes further and calls into question the legal validity of the municipal decisions, speaking of “a serious doubt about the legality of the contested decisions”.
At the beginning of April, before the municipal council, Thierry Meignen placed the case on the political ground: “Is Le Blanc-Mesnil Sport Judo still a sports club or has it become a political association? »
“There was a use of the powers of the mayor for political ends and to oust the association”, denounces today Me Delarue, the club’s lawyer.
In addition to the suspension of municipal decisions, the administrative court ordered the town of Blanc-Mesnil to pay 1,500 euros for the costs incurred by the association.
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