Can a tax inspector post racist comments on social media?
As part of his training as a trainee public finance inspector, a student had posted a number of racist and anti-Semitic tweets under a pseudonym.
He was subsequently promoted to inspector and assigned to a regional office in August 2020, before being dismissed on September 30, 2020, in connection with those tweets.
He challenged the dismissal in court.
The Administrative Court of Appeals will, however, note:
the tweets in question did indeed constitute“breaches of the obligations of neutrality, discretion, and dignity incumbent upon public officials”;
It also notes thatadministration’sadministrationhad been damaged because the inspector had“posted […] a tweet announcing his success in the public finance inspector exam, such that his followers could associateadministration his posts.”
The Court will further find that the inspector’s testimony was not tainted. The inspector claimed that he had been held against his will. The Court notes, however,that the inspector does not demonstrate“merely by filing a complaint on March 3, 2020, regarding these facts, that the doors to the room, which were closed for reasons of confidentiality, were locked, nor that the individual was prevented from leaving. [He] does not, moreover, seriously dispute that he remained in possession of his phone while waiting in that room, nor that he was prevented from communicating by that means. In any event, if he had considered himself to have been the victim of false imprisonment, [the inspector], who does not demonstrate that he was in a state of shock at the time of signing the report, could have added a comment to that effect on the document he signed without making any remarks.”
The Court will therefore deny the inspector’s motion to overturn his dismissal.
CAA Toulouse, June 17, 2025, No. 23TL02197
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