{"id":158464,"date":"2026-03-09T21:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T21:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/158464\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T21:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T21:47:08","slug":"councilmember-vickie-paladino-sues-to-block-council-discipline-over-posts-disparaging-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/158464\/","title":{"rendered":"Councilmember Vickie Paladino sues to block council discipline over posts disparaging Muslims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Councilmember Vickie Paladino filed a lawsuit against the City Council Monday in an effort to stop a disciplinary process against her for a series of posts disparaging Muslims.<\/a><\/p>\n

Paladino<\/a> argued in the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit that her comments, including a post where she called for the \u201cexpulsion of Muslims from western nations,\u201d were protected speech and separate from her Council duties.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Council intends to set a dangerous precedent for every legislator: if we don\u2019t like your speech, we are coming after you,\u201d says the lawsuit \u2014 filed by attorney Jim Walden<\/a>, a critic of Mayor Mamdani who ran against him as an independent in last year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n

The suit comes after the Council Ethics Committee voted earlier this month\u00a0to charge Paladino for her Islamaphobic posts<\/a>. Council speaker Julie Menin has also limited her involvement in council committees,<\/p>\n

At a court appearance on Monday, a Manhattan Supreme Court justice denied Paladino\u2019s request for a temporary injunction, but set a hearing for April 7, Walden said. The judge said Paladino doesn\u2019t need to respond to the internal City Council case until after a decision is rendered following the April hearing.<\/p>\n

\"NewNew York City Council member Vickie Paladino (front) is pictured outside 26 Federal Plaza after the NYC Council Common Sense Caucus’ meeting with ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan at ICE’s New York headquarters on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

The Queens councilmember has a history of highly controversial remarks.<\/p>\n

In a since-deleted post<\/a> in December, Paladino said that \u201cwe\u2019re in the midst of a global jihad\u201d and called for the \u201cexpulsion of Muslims from western nations\u201d after a terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.<\/p>\n

In another post, Paladino criticized Mamdani\u2019s appointment of Faiza Ali \u2014 a Muslim woman born and raised in Brooklyn \u2014- as the commissioner of the Mayor\u2019s Office of Immigrant Affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York is under foreign occupation. There\u2019s really no other way to put it,\u201d Paladino\u00a0said<\/a>. \u201cDoes this administration have one single actual American in it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FaizaFaiza Ali speaks onstage during the We Stand United NYC Rally outside Trump International Hotel & Tower on January 19, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by D Dipasupil\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The suit also comes after Speaker Julie Menin only let Paladino sit at on two committees because of the offensive posts about Muslims and other minorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are numerous, numerous, too many to\u00a0count content on her social media that is abhorrent and is unacceptable, and so I made that decision about the committees with that in mind because we are not going to tolerate that kind of conduct and that kind of divisiveness within the body,\u201d Menin said in January.<\/p>\n

Jack Lobel, a spokesperson for the speaker, said the Ethics Committee has opened a matter about Paladino but wouldn\u2019t comment further.<\/p>\n

Paladino argued in the suit she\u2019s being subjected to different treatment because of her conservative political stance. She also argued that the posts were sent out in the early morning hours, not during the work day.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s got a right to say what they want,\u201d Walden told the Daily News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Councilmember Vickie Paladino filed a lawsuit against the City Council Monday in an effort to stop a disciplinary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[267,9,24,10,692,12,63,87,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-158464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-politics","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}