⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Second Circuit considers a retired union officer's challenge to a disciplinary hearing. Palladino served as an officer of New York City clerical workers' Local fifteen-forty-nine. His retirement package included payment for forty-three unused compensatory days. A union audit questioned whether the payment was properly authorized. The union later ordered him to return it and expelled him from membership. Palladino maintains that he was entitled to the payment under longstanding union practice. He sued the national union and its hearing officer under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, which protects a union member's right to a full and fair disciplinary hearing. This is an appeal from dismissal of his lawsuit, not a new criminal trial or a fresh hearing on the compensation rules. He wants the case to proceed to discovery, the process for obtaining evidence before trial. Palladino challenges the officer's impartiality because she had already found the draft audit credible in an earlier proceeding over the national union's takeover of the local. He also contends that he was denied a meaningful opportunity to question the audit's authors and to reject that officer before the hearing. The union disputes bias and will defend the proceeding as fundamentally fair. Two terms matter at the outset. The constitution being discussed is the union's internal rulebook, not the United States Constitution. To strike a proposed hearing officer means to remove a name from the selection list, not to stop work. The parties disagree about whether the timing of notice prevented Palladino from exercising that right. You will also hear hearsay: a statement made outside the hearing and offered to prove what it asserts. Union hearings need not follow every courtroom evidence rule; reliable hearsay may be considered. The dispute here is whether this audit and the surrounding evidence met that standard while allowing a fair opportunity to defend himself.

Palladino v. AFSCME (No. 25-2688) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, argued October 20, 2026.