Sabrina Decanton was supposed to lead the Greens list for the 2026 municipal elections in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis). But she had withdrawn her candidacy, criticized by several party militants who pointed to her homosexuality as an electoral obstacle.
Six months after her resignation, Sabrina Decanton won her case. Invested by The Ecologists to lead the Saint-Ouen list in the 2026 municipal elections, she had ultimately withdrawn her candidacy after several militants had presented her homosexuality as an electoral handicap in certain districts of the city. In May, the party sanctioned five militants from her local section and recognized the discriminatory nature of their remarks. “These people have behaved in a way that is not worthy of the values we uphold by discriminating Sabrina Decanton on account of her sexual orientation”, insists to têtu·, François Thiollet, deputy secretary for internal life.
In November 2025, in the statement she posted on Facebook to announce her withdrawal, the 40-year-old lesbian candidate denounces the remarks “unacceptable” that pushed her to make this decision. The same day, this employee of the departmental council specifies in an interview with têtu·: “These militants think that poor neighborhoods and Muslims are necessarily homophobic. Their lesbophobia is thus double-edged with classism and Islamophobia.” Quickly, the party’s national secretary, Marine Tondelier, came to her defense and denounced in turn “unacceptable political practices” before referring the case to the disciplinary bodies.
Sabrina Decanton’s Reaction
Of the five sanctioned militants, two are suspended for six months for “remarks calling into question Sabrina Decanton’s ability to head the municipal list due to her sexual orientation”. Three others receive a warning for not reporting these remarks. They are also accused of pressuring the candidate to sign a charter of commitment not to make decisions without their approval if she were elected. “It’s a charter that is completely contrary to our ethics”, notes François Thiollet.
“I am relieved that the disciplinary council clearly recognizes that I was the victim of discriminatory remarks. But I can only regret that these sanctions are weak when those remarks amount to insults, which are punishable by law”, sighs Sabrina Decanton, reached by têtu·. Conversely, François Thiollet argues that “the six-month suspension represents one of the strongest sanctions in the movement’s internal rules. It is pronounced for serious cases”.
The affair embarrasses the party all the more since one of the sanctioned militants, Driss Naïch, was already facing an 18-month exclusion for harassing another activist when he was implicated by Sabrina Decanton. Nevertheless, he was invested in the fourth position on the Greens list in Saint-Ouen, presented not as a militant but as coming from civil society. On social networks, at the end of January, he denounced a “sadly familiar pattern”: “The pattern of a racially marked man, from the working-class neighborhoods, presented as naturally guilty.” He also questioned the conditions of his exclusion: “I was suspended from the party in December without ever being heard by the bodies (…) The fundamental principle of the right to a defense was trampled.” According to François Thiollet, Driss Naïch did not attend the hearings dedicated to the lesbian-phobia affair involving Sabrina Decanton. At the end of the campaign, in March, the Saint-Ouen Greens list obtained 8.5% of the vote.
