LAUSANNE. The Federal Supreme Court has struck down the City of Geneva’s rule requiring its employees to live in or near the city, in a judgment made public on Wednesday that will force a rewrite of the municipal personnel regulations.
The case was brought by a city truck driver who wanted to buy a retirement home in Saxon, in the canton of Valais, while keeping his Geneva job. The city refused, arguing that the long commute would increase his environmental footprint and leave him too tired to work safely. The judges in Lausanne rejected both arguments.
What the court said
Residency obligations for public employees must remain the exception, the court held, and can be imposed only where a clear public interest requires them. The judgment points to the classic examples: police officers, firefighters and teachers, whose presence in the community they serve can be essential to the job. A general rule binding the whole municipal workforce fails that test.
The city’s environmental argument fared no better. The court accepted that commuting has a footprint, but found a blanket residency rule to be a disproportionate way of addressing it, one that restricts the private lives of thousands of employees for a benefit the city could not quantify.
Who is affected
Geneva’s current rules oblige municipal staff to live in the canton, in neighbouring parts of Vaud or just across the border in France. The city said after the ruling that it will have to rewrite its regulations, and acknowledged that the shift could affect a substantial share of its workforce.
Public law experts expect other communes with residency clauses to review them. Several Swiss cities impose such duties on selected categories of staff, and the Lausanne judgment now gives any employee challenging them a clear precedent to cite.
For the driver at the centre of the case, the outcome is simpler. He can buy the house in Saxon, keep the job in Geneva, and let the commute be his own affair.