A Togolese national entered France in 2015 and had his asylum request denied. He then applied for exceptional admission to stay in the country, a legal process that allows individuals in certain vulnerable situations to remain in France despite not meeting standard immigration criteria. On February 13, 2025, the prefect of the Aube, a regional administrative official, issued a decree refusing the request, requiring the man to leave France within thirty days, specifying the destination country, and imposing a two-year ban on re-entry. The administrative court in Châlons-en-Champagne rejected his appeal to annul the decision on June 25, 2025. When he appealed further, the Nancy Administrative Court of Appeal also rejected his request on September 12, 2025. The court stated that the applicant could not challenge the decision based on a failure to comply with a specific legal provision, Article L423-23 of the Code on the entry and stay of foreigners and the right of asylum, because his original request did not rely on that article. The applicant then appealed to the Court of Cassation, France’s highest administrative court. He argued that the decree showed the prefect had indeed considered his request in light of Article L423-23. In its decision, the Council of State, France’s highest administrative authority, established a general rule: when a prefect considers a request for a residence permit and examines other legal provisions ex officio (on their own initiative), any grounds for rejecting the request, including those based on the provisions examined by the prefect, can be challenged in court. The court found that the prefect of the Aube had considered the applicant’s case under Articles L435-1 and L435-4 of the CESEDA (Code on the Entry and Stay of Foreigners and the Right of Asylum), and also looked at Article L423-23, taking into account the applicant’s professional, personal, and family circumstances. The court ruled that the previous judge had made a legal error by dismissing the argument about the failure to comply with Article L423-23. As a result, the order rejecting the applicant’s appeal was annulled, and the case was sent back to the Nancy Administrative Court of Appeal. The French state was also ordered to pay 3,000 euros to the applicant under the Administrative Justice Code. The Minister of the Interior, who had said he would rely on the Council of State’s judgment, did not defend the previous reasoning. The court emphasized that if a prefect includes a ground for refusal in the decree, even if it was not the one the applicant used, that ground is part of the decision and can be challenged. This means that an applicant who initially based their request on one legal ground can still challenge the prefect’s assessment of other grounds, such as the applicant’s private and family life, even if those were not the focus of the original request. The decision is a new development in a series of legal cases known as the Lebon collection, but its principle is clear and can be used in similar cases. In practice, this means that when drafting a legal appeal, applicants must carefully examine the grounds given in the decree and identify all the legal provisions the prefect considered, even if they were only looked at as a secondary option. Each of these grounds can be challenged separately, and the initial basis of the request should not limit the scope of the legal arguments. The court did not rule on the actual merits of the case, leaving the Nancy Administrative Court of Appeal to determine whether the prefect properly applied Article L423-23.