City Councilmember Vickie Paladino, a Republican representing parts of Queens, is suing the New York City Council \u2014 asking a state judge to step in to block an upcoming hearing where she would have to defend herself against a committee\u2019s charge of disorderly conduct related to a series of virulently anti-Muslim tweets she fired off from her personal account.<\/p>\n
In a lawsuit filed<\/a> in New York Supreme Court Monday by attorney Jim Walden, who ran an unsuccessful independent campaign for mayor against now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Paladino asked a judge to \u201cenjoin an unprecedented and unconstitutional act of legislative overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe City Council cannot police the private speech of its members, especially not selectively. This is a case involving misuse of power,\u201d Walden said of the lawsuit. \u201cIf permitted, the power can and will be misused by both political parties. Courts need to stop this trend dead in its tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n A State Supreme Court judge denied Paladino\u2019s request for a temporary restraining order but set up a hearing for early April to decide the matter ahead of the planned ethics hearing before the council next month, Walden told THE CITY after the appearance Monday.<\/p>\n The suit follows the council\u2019s Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections, Standards and Ethics vote earlier this month<\/a> to charge Paladino for her tweets that followed Mamdani\u2019s historic election victory as the first Muslim elected to city mayor and immediately after a terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.<\/p>\n In a now deleted tweet<\/a> last December, Paladino called for the \u201cexpulsion of Muslims from western nations\u201d calling on the Trump administration to come up with a \u201clegal framework for the denaturalization process and get it over with before we end up with another 9\/11 or worse.\u201d<\/p>\n She later railed about \u201cIslamic conquest<\/a>\u201d of New York City when Mamdani tweeted a photo of sanitation workers praying before they started snow plowing.<\/p>\n On another occasion, she wrote that \u201caffiliation with a terrorist group sure seems like a prerequisite for employment with Zohran\u2019s administration.\u201d<\/p>\n In January, new Council Speaker Julie Menin removed Paladino from five of the seven committees she\u2019d previously served on and referred the matter to the rules and ethics committee, noting that they were part of a pattern of such tweets, which have often been written by Palladino\u2019s 48-year-old son Thomas Palladino, Jr.<\/a>, an ardent Trump supporter.<\/p>\n At the time Menin called the rhetoric \u201cabhorrent and is unacceptable,\u201d and said there were \u201cnumerous \u2014 too many to count\u201d examples of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n In her lawsuit, Paladino argues she\u2019s being subjected to disparate treatment because of her conservative political views, and argues she tweeted the remarks from her personal account and outside of work hours.<\/p>\n The lawsuit comes two days after right-wing influencer Jake Lang rallied with a few dozen supporters outside Gracie Mansion to \u201cStop Islamic takeover of New York City.\u201d He was met by about 150 counter-protesters at an event where two people were arrested after trying to set off bombs<\/a> in what NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said was \u201cbeing investigated as an act of ISIS-inspired terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n