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Outspoken Queens Republican Vickie Paladino is firing back at her City Council peers with a fiery lawsuit, as she stands on the brink of potential censure over social media posts criticized as Islamophobic.
Paladino, aged 71, has described the recent complaint by the council’s Ethics Committee as “naked despotism” that violates her First Amendment rights to free speech, according to the lawsuit set to be filed on Monday.
She further accuses council members of harboring their own biases, pointing out that they target her remarks while others are allowed to label President Trump a “pedophile” without substantiating evidence.
“The Court cannot tolerate this naked despotism, which will have a chilling effect on every legislator’s advocacy, particularly for Republicans and Independents,” states Paladino’s lawsuit.
The ethics committee voted on Monday to formally “charge” Paladino over a series of controversial posts she made on X in recent months, where she advocated for the expulsion of Muslims and appeared to question the citizenship status of one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointees.
The proposed charges must now be voted on by the full council and could lead to censure, although aside from being formally reprimanded, it’s not clear whether Paladino faces any further consequences.
“New York is under foreign occupation,” Paladino had written in February over Mamdani’s appointment of Faiza Ali — a born-and-raised Brooklynite and child of Pakistani immigrants — to be his chief immigration officer.
“There’s really no other way to put it,” the Queens representative said. “Does this administration have one single actual American in it?”
Another of her tweets from December called for the “expulsion of Muslims from western nations, or at the very least the severe sanction of them within western borders” after a pair of Islamic extremists killed 16 people at an Australia Hannukah celebration.
“The administration needs to begin developing a formal legal framework for the denaturalization process and get it over with before we end up with another 9/11 or worse,” Paladino wrote. “Enough is enough.”
In her lawsuit, she argued those tweets were hers to make and protected by the First Amendment.
“The Charge is based on the absurd notion that public advocacy might offend members and staff of the Council and thus constitute ‘harassment’ under the Council’s internal HR policy,” her suit says, referring to the council’s action against her.
“By attempting to apply the Policy to public criticism over the internet, the Council intends to set a dangerous precedent for every legislator: if we don’t like your speech, we are coming after you,” court documents state.
“The Council wants to assume the right — and will thereafter have the obligation — to surveil and police the speech of each and every Council member and staff to assure a ‘safe workplace.’ “
Paladino’s suit argues that the City Council isn’t following its own parameters either way.
She pointed out a Feb. 12 meeting where Councilman Chi Ossé (D-Brooklyn) said, “There is a pedophile of the United States sitting in the White House,” in reference to Trump’s friendship with late sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.
“[Ossé] did so without a scintilla of evidence,” her lawsuit says. “On information and belief, no disciplinary investigation has commenced based on Council Member Ossé’s outrageous accusation against a sitting president.”
Her suit seeks to drop all City Council charges and proceedings against her ahead of the vote Tuesday. She also is demanding a declaration that members’ private social media cannot be subject to censure on harassment grounds and compensation for attorney’s fees incurred fighting her charges.
Paladino’s potential censure has left council members divided.
“The City Council has a very clear policy against harassment, which includes conduct away from the workplace as well as online and on social media,” Speaker Julie Menin (D-Manhattan) told Gothamist.
“This deplorable, inflammatory conduct negatively affects Council employees and people across our city,” she said. “We will not tolerate behavior that targets or demeans any community based on their faith, background, or immigration status — particularly from our own members.”
But others who have decried Paladino’s comments still thought the actions taken against her went too far.
“Paladino is entitled to the same First Amendment protections that every American is,” Councilman Frank Morano (R-Staten Island) told CBS News.
“I don’t like a lot of her tweets,” he said. “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.”