by France's highest administrative court, setting a potential precedent for further legal challenges. Reactions The ban was supported by a number of French politicians, including the socialist prime minister Manuel Valls, who said: "The burkini is not a new range of swimwear, a fashion. It is the expression of a political project, a counter-society, based notably on the enslavement of women." Some commentators in France criticized the bans, and reports of Muslim women being stopped by police for wearing headscarves and long-sleeved clothes on beaches caused outrage among members of the French Socialist Party and rights groups. A poll showed that 64% of the French public supported the bans, while another 30% were indifferent. The bans and their enforcement prompted criticism and ridicule abroad, particularly in English-speaking countries. A The New York Times editorial called French politicians' "paternalistic pronouncements on the republic's duty to save Muslim women from enslavement" bigotry and hypocritical. Liberal British Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz offered a critique of both the swimsuit and its ban: "Burkini is sad symbol of Islam today going backwards on gender issues. Banning it is sad symbol of liberalism today going backwards in reply." Other Muslim commentators, particularly Muslim women, have argued that the burkini gives women who do not wish to expose their body for religious or other reasons the freedom to enjoy the beach. Human Rights Watch also criticized the ban, stating that it "actually amounts to banning women from the beach, in the middle of the summer, just because they wish to cover their bodies in public. It's almost a form of collective punishment against Muslim women for the actions of others." Some drew parallels between the burkini ban and the French ban of the Catholic soutane some 111 years earlier after the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State. Germany In December 2018, the municipality of Koblenz, citing hygiene concerns, voted to ban the burkini in public swimming pools in 2018, with CDU, AfD and Freie Wähler councillors forming a majority for the decision. Protests were held against the decision gathering some 70 individuals from Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Social Democratic Party of Germany and Alliance 90/The Greens. In June 2019, German courts overruled and lifted the ban citing violations to the German constitution's call for equality. In June 2018, a school in western Germany created controversy after it was found