Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH)

About Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH)

The Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) is New York City's central, independent administrative law court. It is a non-mayoral executive agency of the City of New York and is not part of the New York State Unified Court System. Mayor Ed Koch created it by executive order in 1979, and voters later made it a formal agency under the City Charter in 1988.

OATH has three divisions: the Trials Division, which hears a wide range of city matters such as civil service discipline, city contract disputes, license enforcement and Loft Law landlord-tenant disputes, with Administrative Law Judges serving five-year terms; the Hearings Division, which holds hearings on summonses issued by more than 20 city and state enforcement agencies, many of them by telephone; and the Special Education Hearings Division, which decides due process disputes about special education services. A Help Center assists people who do not have a lawyer. OATH's Hearings Division has locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.

Practice areas

Areas of work that Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) describes on its own website. They describe the organization as a whole, not the practice of any individual attorney listed below.

Organization profile based on its official website and public sources (reviewed October 29, 2026). Attorney list from the New York State Unified Court System registration data. Not affiliated with Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH).

Registered attorneys

Registration status can change at any time. Confirm any attorney's current status through the official New York Attorney Search.