On 13 October, the Nantes Administrative Court of Appeal upheld the annulment of the 'anti-pesticide' municipal order issued by the mayor of La Montagne. Adopted by Fabien Gracia on 11 January 2021, the disputed order stipulated that "any discharge of plant protection products outside the property for which they are intended constitutes a waste deposit and is prohibited". According to the Court, although the mayor was responsible for waste management, he had encroached on the State's jurisdiction in terms of the special policing of plant protection products by adopting such an order.

Fabien Garcia complained that the court of first instance had not ruled on the potential classification of pesticide discharges as waste, and that it had not sufficiently defined the scope of the State's jurisdiction under the special policy on plant protection products. It also argued that "the special policy on plant protection products does not extend to products spilled, discharged or deposited outside the areas in question and outside regulatory uses", and that the ban on discharging pesticides beyond treated plots did not prevent the use of plant protection products.

In its decision to dismiss the case, the Nantes Administrative Court of Appeal stated that the judges at first instance were not obliged to respond to all the arguments raised, and that they could therefore limit their reasoning to lack of jurisdiction.
Thus, according to the Court, the order issued by the mayor amounted to a general measure regulating the use of plant protection products, a power reserved to the authorities of the central State under the special administrative policing of plant protection products. In addition, although it recognised that the mayor could impose "administrative sanctions to compel the person responsible for abandoned and harmful waste to carry out the work necessary to eliminate it", it considered that the mayor of La Montagne had not demonstrated any particular local circumstances justifying the adoption of such a measure.

As part of his appeal, the mayor had also submitted a request to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling on whether pesticides are indeed "waste like any other", which the Court of Appeal refused to refer on the grounds that it was not relevant to the resolution of the dispute. According to the Court of Appeal, the dispute did not concern the implementation of provisions of European Union law, but rather the determination of the allocation of administrative police powers between national authorities.