Paladino settles with City Council over anti-Muslim posts
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Queens Councilmember Vickie Paladino and the City Council settled their conflict over Islamophobic comments the lawmakers made last year. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
Queens Republican Councilmember Vickie Paladino’s fight with the City Council is over after both sides agreed to drop their respective cases against the other over anti-Muslim comments she made online.
The Council is settling its ethics charges against Paladino for her comments, which included calling for the expulsion of Muslims from Western nations, without a hearing. In turn, the Queens member will drop her First Amendment lawsuit against the Council.
Paladino will have to publicly apologize for her comments, and delete the honorific “councilwoman” from her X profile as part of the settlement. She will also have to delete the posts that sparked the ethics charges.
As part of the settlement, she received a formal reprimand on Monday from her fellow Queens councilmember, Sandra Ung, who chairs the Committee on Rules, Privileges, Elections Standards and Ethics.
Beyond the rebuke, Paladino is free of any punishment or continued investigation for the social media comments that angered many of her colleagues and had some calling for her expulsion from the Council.
Neither party was allowed to comment to reporters on the settlement outside of statements laid out in the legal documents.
"The disciplinary charge against Council Member Paladino has been withdrawn, and she has withdrawn her lawsuit,” said Ung. “I appreciate that CM Paladino took down her tweets. I also want to thank the Court for facilitating settlement discussions. I believe the resolution strikes the right balance between protection of Council staff and the First Amendment liberties of Council Members. I met with CM Paladino and told her that I did not approve of the contents of her tweets.”
Paladino claimed in her statement that her tweets were not directed at any specific Council employee.
"The disciplinary charge against me has been withdrawn and I am withdrawing my lawsuit,” she said. “To be clear, my personal social-media posts were not directed at any Council Member or staff. I am responsible for the content, I never intended to make Council Members or staff feel unwelcomed or unsafe in their work environment. I send a heartfelt thank you to the Court for facilitating this resolution."
Paladino landed in hot water in December for several posts following the killing of 13 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia by a pair of gunmen.
She said Western governments should restrict Muslims from living within their borders. She also reposted a number of tweets expressing similar sentiments, including one that called on governments to “ban Islam.”
“We need to take very seriously the need to begin the expulsion of Muslims from western nations, or at the very least the severe sanction of them within western borders,” Paladino said in the post. “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.”
The Islamophobic remarks drew immediate condemnation from some of her Council colleagues, who called Paladino’s messages “disgusting” and “deplorable.”
She was then formally charged by the City Council on the grounds that the comments constituted workplace harassment. She sued the Council over the charges, arguing that they violated her First Amendment rights.
Since the initial posts and subsequent legal back-and-forth, Paladino has continued to post and repost similar comments.
In April, she repeatedly reposted baseless comments drawing a connection between a fire that ripped through a historic church in Astoria and a Muslim community living nearby.
