Well of course they did.
Because no matter what the alleged "problem" is, the best solution for it is to come up with yet
another set of rules about what the wimmenz can and cannot do.
Honestly I don't know what the motivation behind the passage of this law was - if there's some supposed or actual legitimate public "health and safety" reason for it, or if it's a perverse attempt to force the "freedom" of walking around unveiled on these women whether they want it or not, or if its just another anti-Muslim thing pure and simple.
But really - what does it actually accomplish, other than taking away a woman's presumed right to wear or not wear something? The article says that the "niqab and burka are widely seen in France as threats to women's rights and the secular nature of the state."
As far as women's rights goes, let's be honest: assuming a woman who wears the items in question does so by her own free will, and is not doing so because she's afraid of what might happen to her if she doesn't, making it illegal for her to wear them is limiting her rights, not improving them.
And if a woman is wearing it because she's being required to do so by some other party who has the power to require it and make the requirement stick due to the amount of control over her they can exert... then my fear is that not allowing her to wear it in public will result in her becoming even more isolated from a world in which women actually have the freedom to make their own choices about these things. Because if someone else is controlling her so much that she is wearing the things even though she doesn't want to, they probably have enough control to keep her isolated if it's a choice between going out unveiled and not going out at all.
Personally I find the wearing of these things ridiculous, primarily because of the misogynist mindset that created the mandate in the first place, aside from any religious considerations. But that doesn't mean I get to meddle with someone else's right to acquiesce to that mandate so long as they are doing it freely. And when I say "freely," I mean in the absence of any real and present threat, not because they've been taught that it's right to wear it and have simply accepted it without question (so far).
Again - I don't think anyone has any way of knowing how this will play out in the lives of the individual women who are going to be affected by it. But I'm not gonna buy the "women's rights" angle when all they're doing is countering one set of restrictions limiting women's freedom to choose with another set of restrictions that do exactly the same thing. The way to improve the lot of women who live with nonsensical (to us) religious restrictions on their personal freedom is not to stick it to them from the secular side as well.