New York City government lawyers representing 14 members of the City Council moved to quash subpoenas brought by Queens councilmember Vickie Paladino, a Republican, on Monday in her lawsuit over her “anti-Muslim social media posts.” Paladino is suing the council after its ethics committee charged her with disorderly conduct earlier in March for violating the council’s “anti-harassment and discrimination policies” with social media posts, in which the Republican called for the “expulsion of Muslims from Western nations” and suggested that the administration of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not “have one single actual American in it.”
“Petitioner Vickie Paladino has served 14 subpoenas on members of the New York City Council with the sole purpose of creating a public spectacle in your honor’s courtroom,” the city law department wrote in its filing.
“Petitioner is not shy about her intentions. When she publicly tweeted about these subpoenas, she promised that ‘there is much more to come,’” the government lawyers wrote. “This court should swiftly and decisively put an end to petitioner’s patent misuse of the judicial process—before her threatened deluge of ‘much more’ hits the docket.”
The council members, including Julie Menin, the body’s first Jewish speaker, argued that the information sought in Paladino’s subpoenas is legally irrelevant to her claim that the ethics investigation violated her free speech rights and that the information is protected by legislative privilege.
The New York Post reported that a lawyer for Paladino said that some of the subpoenas sought testimony from council members about why the Republican’s social media posts were worthy of censure when some of the subpoenaed council members have made disparaging remarks about conservatives.
Those remarks included referring to U.S. President Donald Trump as a “pedophile” in reference to his connections to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the lawyer reportedly said.
Lawyers for the council argued that those comparisons were spurious, because they did not discriminate against a “protected class” of minorities, like Muslims.
In her suit, Paladino is seeking an injunction to prevent the council from holding disciplinary hearings and a declaratory judgement regarding the scope of her First Amendment rights.
In addition to the motion to quash the subpoenas, the council has moved to dismiss Paladino’s suit outright.
