On July 14, 2026, New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph A. McBride issued a Decision and Order in Neroni v. Watershed Agricultural Council of the New York City Watersheds, Inc. , Delaware County Index No. EF2026-106, NYSCEF Doc. No. 166.
In that decision, Justice McBride acknowledged my legitimate disability-related needs for accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). He then denied the additional preparation time I requested, relying expressly upon my legal education, litigation activities, and journalism.
The significance of his ruling extends beyond the denial of an adjournment. Justice McBride substituted his personal assessment of how a disabled attorney, civil-rights litigant, and journalist should manage her affairs for the individualized disability-access analysis required by federal law.
He also expressly treated my exercise of constitutional rights as a reason to deny an accommodation intended to permit me to exercise those very rights.
I. Justice McBride Acknowledged My Legitimate Need for ADA Accommodation
On page 6 of his July 14, 2026 Decision and Order, Justice McBride expressly acknowledged my:
“legitimate requests and needs for certain ADA accommodations”
This acknowledgment is legally important.
Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12132, prohibits public entities, including state courts, from denying qualified individuals with disabilities the benefits of public services or subjecting them to discrimination by reason of disability.
Its implementing regulation, 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(7)(i), requires reasonable modifications to policies, practices, and procedures when necessary to avoid disability discrimination, unless the public entity demonstrates that the modification would fundamentally alter the nature of the service, program, or activity.
Justice McBride therefore was not deciding whether I deserved special treatment. He was administering a public judicial service subject to federal disability-discrimination law.
The issue was whether the court's scheduling practices required modification to permit me meaningful participation in litigation despite my disabilities.
Instead of undertaking that analysis, Justice McBride relied on considerations having nothing to do with my functional limitations.
II. Justice McBride Used My Legal Education, Litigation Activity, and Journalism Against My Request for Accommodation
Justice McBride wrote:
“Given Plaintiff’s background as a licensed attorney in New York, a frequent pro se litigant, her propensity to name several defendants within one action, and her noted journalism activity, it would be reasonable for Plaintiff to anticipate early, and even pre-answer, motion practice that would lead a reasonable person to anticipate this workload and therefore make necessary plans to litigate in a reasonable time period.”
Decision and Order dated July 14, 2026, NYSCEF Doc. No. 166, at 6.*\
Consider what the judge actually did.
He identified four personal characteristics or activities:
1. My background as a New York attorney.
2. My frequent participation in litigation without counsel.
3. My supposed propensity to name multiple defendants.
4. My journalism.
He then used those characteristics to reason that I should have anticipated the workload and arranged my affairs accordingly.
None of these four considerations measures my disability, my functional limitations, or the effectiveness of the accommodation I requested.
The ability to understand legal procedure is not the physical or neurological ability to work continuously.
Experience in litigation does not eliminate disability.
Commencing civil actions does not eliminate disability.
Publishing investigative journalism does not eliminate disability.
The ADA contains no exception for educated disabled people, professionally experienced disabled people, disabled litigants who commence multiple actions, or disabled journalists.
Yet Justice McBride's reasoning effectively imposed precisely such an exception.
III. Justice McBride Converted My Exercise of the Right to Petition the Government Into a Reason to Deny Disability Accommodation
Justice McBride went further.
In footnote 10, he wrote:
“The Court wishes to note here that most, if not all, of the cases that Plaintiff cites as contributing to her workload were cases in which pro se Plaintiff, either alone or with her husband and co-plaintiff, Mr. Frederick Neroni, commenced actions before the Court.”
*Id., at 6 n.10.*
What legal significance does the fact that I commenced those actions have for the question of whether my disability requires accommodation?
The First Amendment protects the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Access to the courts is one recognized means of exercising that right.
Title II of the ADA protects meaningful access to public judicial services by qualified individuals with disabilities.
These protections operate together. A disabled litigant does not surrender disability protections by exercising the right to commence litigation.
Justice McBride nevertheless treated my initiation of lawsuits as an adverse consideration in deciding whether I should receive accommodation.
His reasoning shifted responsibility for the workload from the court's scheduling decisions to my exercise of the right to sue.
The distinction matters.
I chose to commence civil actions, a protected activity. I did not choose to have sixteen motions calendared for the same day, May 20, 2026.
Nor did I choose to be afforded approximately three weeks to respond to motion practice that included a nearly 2,475-page record from Matter of Ryan (prior case of Watershed Defendants, FOIL-related - my case had nothing to do with FOIL), developed over approximately two years and already familiar to the opposing attorneys.
I requested additional time because of my disabilities and the actual demands of that calendar.
Justice McBride answered by pointing out that I had commenced lawsuits.
That is not an individualized assessment of reasonable accommodation. It is the use of protected litigation activity as a negative factor in an ADA determination.
IV. Justice McBride Substituted Professional Competence for Disability-Related Functional Capacity
A lawyer can be legally competent and physically disabled.
A journalist can be intellectually capable and neurologically disabled.
A litigant can understand a motion perfectly well yet be unable to read thousands of pages, conduct research, dictate responses, and prepare legal submissions within an artificially compressed schedule.
Justice McBride's reliance on my professional background confused these separate questions.
My education and legal experience may explain my ability to identify legal issues and prepare pleadings. They do not determine how many hours per day my neurological disabilities permit me to function.
In Tudor v. Whitehall Central School District, 132 F.4th 242 (2d Cir. 2025), the Second Circuit addressed the distinction between an individual's ability to perform despite a disability and the right to reasonable accommodation.
The relevant principle is that the ability to function under strain does not, by itself, eliminate the need for accommodation.
Justice McBride's reasoning ran in the opposite direction: because I was experienced, he considered it reasonable to expect me to anticipate and manage the workload.
He treated competence as a substitute for physical capacity and foreseeability as a substitute for accessibility.
Neither substitution appears in Title II of the ADA.
V. Justice Joseph A. McBride Deliberately Omitted the Specific, Quantifiable Workload That Necessitated My ADA Accommodation
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Justice Joseph A. McBride's July 14, 2026 Decision and Order in Neroni v. Watershed Agricultural Council of the New York City Watersheds, Inc., Delaware County Index No. EF2026-106, is not merely what he said about my disability and request for accommodation, but what he omitted.
Justice McBride expressly acknowledged my “legitimate requests and needs for certain ADA accommodations.”
He nevertheless denied the additional preparation time I requested, invoking my legal education, litigation activity, supposed propensity to name multiple defendants, and journalism.
What he omitted was the actual, quantifiable workload that necessitated the accommodation.
A. Sixteen motions calendared for a single day by two Supreme Court justices
On May 20, 2026, I faced sixteen motions returnable on the same day, calendared by two New York State Supreme Court justices: Joseph A. McBride and Christopher P. Baker.
These were not sixteen identical motions requiring repetitive responses.
They arose in different proceedings, involved different defendants, different procedural histories, different legal issues, and different factual records.
Each required separate examination, legal research, and preparation of an appropriate response.
The sixteen-motion calendar was not something I imposed upon myself. It resulted from the scheduling decisions of the courts.
Yet Justice McBride did not meaningfully address that extraordinary concentration of motion practice in his stated ADA analysis.
Instead, he attributed responsibility for the workload to my having commenced litigation.
In footnote 10 of his July 14 decision, he wrote:
“The Court wishes to note here that most, if not all, of the cases that Plaintiff cites as contributing to her workload were cases in which pro se Plaintiff, either alone or with her husband and co-plaintiff, Mr. Frederick Neroni, commenced actions before the Court.”
Decision and Order dated July 14, 2026, NYSCEF Doc. No. 166, at 6 n.10.
The distinction is fundamental.
I commenced lawsuits. I did not schedule sixteen motions for the same day. Justices McBride and Baker did.
And the ADA does not authorize a court to deny a disabled litigant reasonable accommodation because she exercised her constitutional right to petition the government for redress of grievances.
B. One motion alone required examination of approximately 2,000 pages from another proceeding
The sixteen-motion calendar included Motion No. 4 filed by the Watershed Agricultural Council defendants.
That motion relied upon a voluminous record from Matter of Ryan v. Watershed Agricultural Council.
The record comprised 2,475 pages of material developed over roughly two years of litigation.
The attorneys representing the defendants had participated in the underlying proceedings or had access to the record over that extended period.
I had not litigated Ryan.
Nevertheless, I was expected to review the record, identify relevant facts, examine the procedural history, research the applicable law, distinguish the underlying litigation from my own claims, and prepare a substantive opposition.
I was afforded approximately three weeks.
Two years of familiarity with the record on the defendants' side. Approximately three weeks for me to examine and answer it.
And that was only one motion among sixteen returnable on the same day.
Justice McBride omitted this concrete disparity from his stated reasoning.
He did not analyze the 2,475 pages. He did not address the competing demands of the remaining fifteen motions. He did not explain how my disability-related limitations affected the time necessary to complete the work.
Instead, he reasoned that my experience as an attorney and frequent litigant meant that I should have anticipated substantial motion practice.
C. The work required more than reading: I needed to prepare an evidentiary affirmation under Carr v. Wegmans
The requested accommodation was not an attempt to delay litigation indefinitely.
I sought time to prepare an evidentiary affirmation opposing the defendants' CPLR 3211(a)(7) motion.
Under Carr v. Wegmans Food Markets, Inc., 182 A.D.3d 667 (3d Dept. 2020), a plaintiff may submit evidentiary material in opposition to a motion attacking the sufficiency of a pleading.
Preparing that affirmation required more than simply reading the Ryan record.
It required identifying relevant portions of the record, comparing those materials with the allegations of my own complaint, researching the applicable legal principles, and explaining why the defendants' reliance upon Ryan did not defeat my causes of action.
These activities required sustained concentration, document review, legal analysis, and preparation of a coherent evidentiary submission.
My neurological disabilities substantially restrict the amount of sustained work I can perform.
Justice McBride's reliance upon my legal education did not address that limitation.
Professional knowledge does not create additional neurological capacity.
Nor does experience in litigation transform three weeks of calendar time into three weeks of uninterrupted, productive legal work for a disabled person.
D. Justice McBride disregarded the difference between calendar time and disability-limited working time
The ADA requires attention to actual functional limitations.
For a person with significant neurological disabilities, twenty-one calendar days cannot simply be equated with twenty-one full working days.
My ability to read, research, dictate, review, and prepare legal documents is limited by my medical conditions.
My request for additional time reflected those limitations, compounded by the simultaneous sixteen-motion calendar and the extraordinary volume of the Ryan record.
Justice McBride did not undertake a functional analysis of that workload in his quoted reasoning.
Instead, he invoked what he believed a person with my legal background and litigation experience should have anticipated.
This substituted an expectation of professional performance for an individualized examination of disability-related capacity.
The Second Circuit's reasoning in Tudor v. Whitehall Central School District, 132 F.4th 242 (2d Cir. 2025), is particularly relevant: the ability to perform despite disability-related hardship does not itself eliminate entitlement to reasonable accommodation.
A disabled litigant does not become less disabled by being knowledgeable, experienced, persistent, or professionally competent.
E. I requested a defined accommodation of approximately four months
I requested an adjournment until approximately the end of September 2026.
The requested modification was concrete and limited.
It concerned the time necessary to address sixteen simultaneous motions, including one resting upon approximately 2,000 pages from another lawsuit, while functioning within my disability-related restrictions.
Justice McBride did not explain in the quoted passage why that accommodation would fundamentally alter the nature of the court's services.
Instead, he relied upon my background and activities:
“Given Plaintiff’s background as a licensed attorney in New York, a frequent pro se litigant, her propensity to name several defendants within one action, and her noted journalism activity, it would be reasonable for Plaintiff to anticipate early, and even pre-answer, motion practice that would lead a reasonable person to anticipate this workload and therefore make necessary plans to litigate in a reasonable time period.”
Decision and Order dated July 14, 2026, NYSCEF Doc. No. 166, at 6.
This reasoning answers a question different from the one presented under Title II of the ADA.
Whether I could anticipate litigation is not the same question as whether I could meaningfully participate in that litigation under the court's imposed schedule despite my disabilities.
F. Justice McBride replaced the statutory inquiry with a judgment about my personal activities
The actual ADA question was straightforward:
Could a disabled litigant with significant neurological limitations meaningfully prepare responses to sixteen motions returnable on the same day, including an evidentiary opposition requiring review of 2,475 pages from another proceeding, within three weeks?
Justice McBride answered a different question:
Should a legally educated, experienced litigant and journalist have anticipated that two judges would simultaneously create an unmanageable motion calendar and deny her reasonable time to prepare? BECAUSE I am a pro se civil rights plaintiff and BECAUSE I am an investigative journalist - and, while we are at it, BECAUSE of WHAT KIND of investigative journalist I am, reporting for over a decade on JUDICIAL AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, including McBride's own.
The first question concerns disability, reasonable modification, functional capacity, and meaningful access to court.
The second deliberately proclaims that a state court may deny a disabled litigant ADA accommodations based on the content of his speech and based on the quality and frequency of his protected activity. In other words, McBride said - if you are disabled, sit at home, do not sue, and do not be a journalist. If you dare sue and if you dare engage in journalism, SUCK IT UP - BECAUSE ADA IS OUT OF YOUR REACH.
BUT, newsflash for McBride: ADA does not have McBride-invented exceptions for ADA coverage for civil rights plaintiffs or journalists.
G. The consequences extended to dismissal and sanctions
The denial of accommodation had direct procedural consequences.
I requested additional time to prepare an evidentiary affirmation.
The requested time was denied.
I was unable to complete the intended affirmation.
Justice McBride proceeded to decide the defendants' motion, relying upon the Ryan record that I had requested additional time to examine and answer.
He also initiated sanctions proceedings under 22 NYCRR Part 130.
The sequence is legally significant.
The court denied the disability-related modification necessary for preparation of my intended submission, proceeded to adjudicate the case without that submission, and imposed punitive consequences.
The authority to manage a court calendar and sanction litigation conduct does not supersede the obligations imposed by Title II of the ADA.
A court cannot disregard the disability-related consequences of its own procedural decisions and then treat the resulting litigation disadvantage as though the denied accommodation played no role.
H. Why the omissions matter under federal disability law
Justice McBride had before him a specific accommodation request arising from a specific workload.
The material circumstances included:
- Sixteen motions returnable on May 20, 2026, calendared by Justices Joseph A. McBride and Christopher P. Baker.
- 2,475 pages of material from Matter of Ryan underlying just one of those motions.
- Approximately two years during which the underlying record had developed and opposing counsel had access to it.
- Approximately three weeks afforded to me to review and answer that material while addressing the remaining motions.
- My significant disability-related restrictions on sustained work.
- My request for approximately four months to prepare an adequate response.
Justice McBride's quoted reasoning did not address those circumstances as an individualized disability-access problem.
He instead invoked my professional qualifications, litigation activity, and journalism.
Those omissions are not merely defects in the thoroughness of his written decision.
They are central to the legal characterization of what occurred.
The actual workload supplied the factual basis for my accommodation request. By excluding it from his stated analysis and substituting considerations unrelated to disability, Justice McBride applied a rationale fundamentally different from the one required by 42 U.S.C. § 12132 and 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(7)(i).
The resulting decision raises substantial questions of failure to make reasonable modifications, discriminatory administration of judicial services, and denial of meaningful access to court.
It also raises a separate First Amendment question because Justice McBride expressly identified my litigation and journalism as considerations supporting his refusal.
Sixteen motions. One day. 2,475 pages in one motion alone. Three weeks to respond. Four months requested.
Those were the concrete facts requiring disability-related analysis.
Justice McBride chose to discuss my education, my lawsuits, and my journalism instead.
That is the central legal defect in his July 14, 2026 ADA ruling.
VI. Justice McBride's Denial of Accommodation Affected My Ability to Oppose the Motion on Its Merits
The denial was not merely an inconvenience.
Under Carr v. Wegmans Food Markets, Inc., 182 A.D.3d 667 (3d Dept. 2020), a plaintiff opposing a CPLR 3211(a)(7) motion may submit evidentiary material in support of the sufficiency of the pleading.
I sought additional time to review the Matter of Ryan record and prepare the evidentiary affirmation necessary to respond to the defendants' arguments.
Without the requested time, I was unable to complete that affirmation.
Justice McBride then proceeded to adjudicate the defendants' motion upon a record I had been denied sufficient time to address.
This produced a direct sequence:
- I requested disability-related additional preparation time.
- The judge denied the requested accommodation.
- I was unable to complete the intended evidentiary opposition.
- The judge proceeded to decide the motion and imposed sanctions.
The legal issue is not simply that the court denied an adjournment.
The court denied disability-related access to the time necessary to prepare my opposition, then adjudicated my case and imposed punishment in the procedural circumstances resulting from that denial.
That sequence raises a serious question of denial of meaningful access under Title II, independently of whether the court's substantive determination on the motion was correct.
VII. Justice McBride Expressly Used My Journalism as a Factor in the ADA Decision
The reference to my “noted journalism activity” deserves separate examination.
Journalism is protected expressive activity under the First Amendment.
My reporting concerns public officials, judicial conduct, local government, and matters of public concern.
Justice McBride's own July 14 decision recognized that my action alleged retaliation arising from litigation, witness participation, investigations, and journalistic reporting concerning municipal conduct.
Yet the same decision expressly invoked my journalism in explaining why I should have anticipated the litigation workload and arranged to meet it.
In other words, the activity that formed part of the subject matter of my retaliation claims became an adverse consideration in the judicial determination of my disability accommodation request.
This raises a distinct First Amendment question.
A public official may not impose adverse treatment because a person engages in protected expression or petitions the government.
A retaliation claim requires examination of the protected activity, the adverse action, and the causal relationship between them. Justice McBride's express reference to my journalism supplies a particularly significant factual basis for examining that relationship.
His language does not merely reveal that he knew I was a journalist.
He affirmatively incorporated my journalism into his stated rationale for denying the accommodation I requested.
That is the legally significant act.
VIII. Justice McBride Effectively Created Categories of Disabled People Entitled to Less Protection
The practical effect of Justice McBride's reasoning was to divide disabled litigants according to characteristics not recognized by the ADA as grounds for reducing their statutory protection.
Under his rationale, an experienced attorney should anticipate the workload.
A frequent litigant should anticipate the workload.
A person who names multiple defendants should anticipate the workload.
A journalist should anticipate the workload.
But the ADA protects qualified individuals with disabilities regardless of whether they are inexperienced or sophisticated, passive or active, professionally trained or untrained.
The statutory inquiry concerns disability-related access, not whether the court approves of the individual's choices, activities, or degree of experience.
Justice McBride's reasoning therefore amounted to an unauthorized narrowing of the class of disabled individuals entitled to effective accommodation.
He did not formally amend the ADA. He did something with immediate practical consequences: he applied an exception of his own making to my request for accommodation.
IX. The ADA Violation and the Subsequent Sanctions Must Be Examined Together
The July 14 ruling did not occur in isolation.
Justice McBride denied the additional time I requested, decided the defendants' motion to dismiss, and initiated sanctions proceedings under 22 NYCRR Part 130.
The relationship between these actions is legally material.
A court's authority to regulate litigation and impose sanctions does not displace its independent obligation to provide nondiscriminatory access under federal disability law.
The existence of judicial discretion over adjournments does not mean that discretion may be exercised on grounds inconsistent with Title II.
Likewise, sanctions authority does not authorize a court to disregard the effect of its own denial of disability accommodation upon a litigant's ability to prepare and present a case.
The procedural sequence must be examined as a whole, particularly where the court was expressly informed of the disability-related limitations and acknowledged the legitimacy of accommodation needs.
The relevant question is whether the court's refusal to modify its procedures denied me meaningful access and whether the subsequent adjudication and sanctions compounded the consequences of that denial.
X. What Justice McBride Actually Did, in Legal Terms
The conduct reflected in the July 14, 2026 ruling can be characterized through several distinct legal doctrines.
First, failure to make reasonable modifications under Title II of the ADA. Justice McBride denied the requested scheduling modification while relying on my professional and expressive activities rather than the disability-related necessity and effectiveness of the requested accommodation.
Second, discriminatory administration of a public judicial service. His reasoning applied personal criteria unrelated to disability-related access in determining whether I would receive the requested modification. This implicates 42 U.S.C. § 12132 and 28 C.F.R. § 35.130.
Third, denial of meaningful access to the courts. The refusal of additional preparation time prevented me from completing the evidentiary opposition I intended to submit, and the court proceeded to adjudicate the motion notwithstanding that consequence.
Fourth, adverse consideration of constitutionally protected activity. Justice McBride expressly relied upon my litigation activity and journalism when explaining his refusal of accommodation. That reasoning implicates the First Amendment's protections of petitioning and expression and warrants analysis under retaliation doctrine.
Fifth, the use of disability-related procedural disadvantage in subsequent adjudication. The denial of additional time, the resulting inability to complete my evidentiary submission, and the subsequent dismissal and sanctions are connected events, not unrelated exercises of judicial discretion.
What can I say.
When McBride ruled against me, declaring that I am not entitled to ADA coverage because I am a pro se civil rights plaintiff and an investigative journalist, McBride was ALREADY disqualified from presiding - because he prejudged the action, as I described in the previous article (which I knew and brought out on a motion to disqualify him) and because he was a material witness in two of the pending cases he prejudged (which I did not know at the time).
Yet, little did I know that, when McBride, on July 14 2026, in his decision in Neroni v Watershed in Delaware County Supreme Court was taking an axe to the ADA bill-of-attainder style barring a disabled journalist (me) from its mandatory benefits, there was a SECOND investigative journalist - with a vision impairment - to whom McBride ALSO denied ADA coverage, not in such an open way as with me, but did it nevertheless.
The story will continue.
Stay tuned.
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