Those mayors will now have to decide whether to withdraw the decrees, or keep their bans in place and face further legal action from human rights groups.
Mayors in the other 30 coastal resorts that have banned burkinis – mainly on the Côte d'Azur – will now have to make their own decision whether to withdraw the decrees.
Only two months ago the old guard managed to water down a bill to liberalise prisons, while the president was obliged to withdraw a decree that would have switched powers of search and arrest from prosecutors to judges.
On the same day Colombia said it had captured a Venezuelan national guard officer carrying 40,000 AK-47 assault rifle cartridges believed to be intended for leftist guerrillas, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela said Saturday he would withdraw a decree overhauling intelligence policies that he had made earlier that week.
Mr Ali made it clear the president would not withdraw the decree, but said Mr Mursi had reassured the judges that its scope would be restricted to "sovereign matters", designed to protect institutions.
But in a statement issued on 7 February and in interviews, Kahn has called on Sarkozy to withdraw the decree, which he said had no chance of passing, and he called on the government to renew its dialogue with the academic world.
"There's a lot of tension here and I won't withdraw my decree," Sisco mayor Ange-Pierre Vivoni told BFM TV, arguing that in his Corsica town the ban would be justified on security grounds.
The opposition leadership refused to negotiate until Mr. Morsi withdrew a decree that put his judgments beyond judicial review until the referendum — which he refused to do.
The coalition of political opposition leaders, calling their group the National Salvation Front, declared that it would not negotiate with Mr. Morsi about resolving the crisis until he withdrew his decree.
The German Confederation asked Denmark to withdraw the March decree, but many developments encouraged Danish resistance.
