About OATH

The Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) is the City’s central, independent administrative law court. OATH has three divisions that are responsible for adjudicating City matters: the OATH Trials Division, the OATH Hearings Division and the OATH Special Education Hearings Division.

The OATH Trials Division adjudicates a wide range of issues that can be referred by any City agency, board or commission. Its caseload includes employee discipline and disability hearings for civil servants, Conflicts of Interest Board cases, proceedings related to the retention of seized vehicles by the police, City-issued license and regulatory enforcement, real estate, zoning and loft law violations, City contract disputes and human rights violations under the City Human Rights Law. OATH Trials are conducted by Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) who are appointed to five-year terms.

In the OATH Hearings Division, hearings are conducted on summonses issued by 25 different City enforcement agencies for alleged violations of law or City rules. These summonses are issued by the Departments of Buildings, Sanitation, Environmental Protection, Consumer and Worker Protection, Health and Mental Hygiene and the Taxi and Limousine Commission, among others. OATH hearings are conducted by Hearing Officers. The OATH Help Center assists self-represented litigants to understand the law, the hearing process and other processes to correctly respond and resolve summonses.

The OATH Special Education Hearings Division adjudicates disputes about special education services provided to New York City children.

OATH also houses the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, which provides mediation and restorative justice support to City government agencies and the public, and the Judicial Institute, a resource center that provides training, continuing education, research and support services for the various administrative law judges and tribunals throughout New York City.

A Brief History of OATH

• 1978:  Mayor Ed Koch signs Executive Order 32, creating the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.  Prior to the order, city agencies conducted disciplinary and disability trials at their own agencies and the judges were employees of those agency.  Executive Order 32 directed agency heads in New York City to send those cases to OATH to be adjudicated by a centralized team of independent Administrative Law Judges who were separate from the agency that brought the case.


• 1988:  The public voted to make OATH a formal agency under the New York City Charter.  Chapter 45-A of the Charter declared that “[t]here shall be an office of administrative trials and hearings which shall conduct adjudicatory hearings for all agencies of the city unless otherwise provided for by executive order, rule, law or pursuant to collective bargaining agreements.”


• 2008:  City Council amends the NYC Charter to move the Environmental Control Board under OATH, significantly expanding OATH’s scope.  What was previously a small agency with one office that mainly handled disciplinary and disability cases brought by agencies against city employees, was now a much larger agency with offices in each borough where OATH adjudicators held hearings on a broad range of civil summonses issued to members of the public.  Within the next few years, summonses issued by DOHMH, TLC, and DCWP would also come to OATH.


• 2016:  City Council passes the Criminal Justice Reform Act, giving OATH jurisdiction to hear certain quality-of-life summonses that were previously sent to criminal court.  OATH also opens its Help Center, providing members of the public with free, non-legal guidance on what to do if they receive a summons.


• 2021:  Executive Order 63 formally establishes OATH’s Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, which serves as the city’s central resource for Alternative Dispute Resolution.  The Center’s predecessor – The Center of Mediation Services – had been an active part of OATH since 2003. 


• 2022:  Following Executive Order 91 of 2021, OATH’s Special Education Hearings Division begins hearing Due Process Complaints filed by parents seeking educational services for students with disabilities.

You can read a more detailed history of OATH in “The NYC Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings: Forty-Five Years of Delivering Impartial Adjudications and Providing Access to Justice” published Volume 46, Issue 3, of the Cardozo Law Review.