New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino is hiring a lawyer to fight an attempt by the council Ethics Committee to censure her because of social media posts it deemed Islamophobic.

Paladino, a Republican who represents Queens, has a history of shooting from the hip but says this time, the council overstepped its bounds. She says she has a First Amendment right to post whatever she wants on social media.

Some council members agree, some don’t.

The posts in question  

One of the posts in question was critical of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of a Muslim-American woman as his chief immigration officer.

“New York is under foreign occupation. There’s really no other way to put it,” Paladino posted on social media. “Does this administration have one single actual American in it?”

Council Speaker Julie Menin asked the Ethics Committee to act.

“The rise in Islamophobia is not something that we will tolerate in our city. Even a single instance has no place in our streets, on our subways, or in our schools,” Menin said.

Paladino says she had “every right” to publish the posts

Paladino arrived to participate in a council hearing on Wednesday despite the Ethics Committee’s attempt to censure her — or hit her with disorderly conduct charges. 

Paladino said on social media how she’s being treated is a mockery of the First Amendment.

“My legal team will respond to this egregious violation of my rights swiftly,” she wrote on social media. “To be clear, I have every right under the United States Constitution to engage in political speech on any platform I see fit. No administrative policy supersedes the Constitution, and no government entity may sanction an elected official — or anyone else — for participation in political discourse in the public square, online or otherwise.”

Paladino has several days to submit a written rebuttal. Then she has to appear in person before the Ethics Committee and urge it not to censure her.

Speaker Menin has already punished Paladino by cutting her committee assignments from seven last year to two this year because of her posts. 

City Council members are split over Paladino’s rhetoric

“I think it’s awful. I mean, Councilmember Paladino is entitled to the same First Amendment protections that every American is,” Staten Island Republican Frank Morano said. “I don’t like a lot of her tweets. I would never tweet something like that. I think a lot them are vile, quite honestly. That being said, she has every right to tweet them.”

“We certainly respect everyone’s freedom of speech, but Councilmember Paladino’s comments were outside the lines and they were profoundly disrespectful, inflammatory, and harmful to New Yorkers. And I think that the council Ethics Committee is doing the right thing,” Brooklyn Democrat Lincoln Restler said.

“I mean, we live in the greatest country in the world where we have the ability to say whatever we want, as long, again, as it’s not screaming fire in the theater and causing damage at that or hurt in any way. That is why the United States is the greatest country in the world,” Brooklyn Democrat Simcha Felder said.

In: