Days ahead of a court-ordered deadline for the Brooklyn Democratic Party to hold a full organizational meeting with county committee members, divisions between old school county loyalists and newer reform members have persisted with a string of legal battles and infighting spiraling into screaming matches.

On Monday, the Kings County Democratic County Committee sued the state in Brooklyn federal court over the court order forcing the county committee to hold an organizational meeting, alleging that forcing the party to follow election law by holding a virtual meeting “restricts and limits their discretion in how to organize themselves,” and “infringes upon the party’s right to free association.” (The same day, however, the county committee sent a notice to members that a a virtual organizational meeting would move ahead on December 16th at noon).

The latest lawsuit comes after months of divisions—centered on members pushing for more inclusion within the party’s county committee—that intensified last week during heated discussions over recent rule changes. The most recent changes have resulted in accusations of a “power grab” among district leaders, leading Frank Seddio, the former party boss who still functions as a district leader, to say out loud what his critics have long accused him of doing:

“We need all of the county committee members we can get to overcome these fucking progressives when we have the meeting,” Seddio said at a December 2nd meeting.

That meeting came days after another meeting on November 29th that changed the rules to increase representation of non-binary and trans people to the county committee—made up of unpaid members who have influence over judicial nominations, special election candidates, and flex the hyperlocal muscle of the Democrats’ organizing.

But lumped in with that rule change was an amendment that allowed the executive committee, not its general members, to fill some 2,400 vacancies on the county committee last week. There are about 5,400 seats total on the county committee.

Before Seddio’s remarks, Julio Peña III, a recently elected district leader, raised concerns over a rushed process to fill those seats behind that rule change. In the amendment itself, the party argued the rule consolidating power to district leaders would “maximize the participation” for newly appointed committee members, “who otherwise would not be able to attend and participate were they elected at the organizational meeting itself.” Peña called it a “power grab.”

As Peña raised the issue, Seddio interrupted him at the December meeting. Others stepped in for Peña while District Leader Lori Maslow—who’s leading the lawsuit against the state—pointed out a double standard from earlier in the evening when District Leader Doug Schneider had been accused of “bullying” her husband, Aaron Maslow, an election lawyer.

Various district leaders interjected, chaos ensued:

The moment during the four hour meeting became a flashpoint in a larger battle among members and as the party aims to make the party more inclusive of different gender identities.

Last spring, six candidates knocked off the ballot for county committee seats sued over a century-old rule requiring candidates to identify as “male” or “female” on the ballot. The rule intended to ensure 50% of seats would be women, but today, is criticized as excluding gender non-binary politicos and pitting women against each other.

In response to the April suit, Bichotte launched a task force in August to rethink the Prohibition-era gender rule.

As a temporary fix in the interim—while the task force reviews permanent solutions—the party added 84 at-large seats intended for gender non-binary or transgender Brooklynites at the November 29th meeting. But the simultaneous rule consolidating power triggered a lawsuit, alleging the party initiated a “plan to diminish and deny” committee members’ voting rights at the biennial meeting. On Thursday, a judge agreed and voided the county committee member appointments under the fast-tracked rule.

That’s what Peña, who is queer and Latinx, and others took issue with at the December meeting.

Of the interaction with Seddio last week, Peña said, “That was a pretty horrifying exchange.”

“It got really out of hand really quickly. I’m not really sure where that aggression came from,” said Peña, who was elected to the post in June and appointed to Bichotte’s gender discrimination and representation task force. He’s among a wave of reformer candidates backed by reformer club New Kings Democrats, which has for years clashed with county leadership to make the political process more transparent and open to increase grassroots participation.

The party did not make Seddio available for an interview to explain what he meant by “progressives.” In a statement on Monday, he blamed the other district leader, Schneider, for “bullying” other members.

“I reacted harshly to one member’s bullying and disrespect and I was wrong, and I apologized during the meeting,” Seddio said. “My reaction was prompted by the bullying tactics of Doug Schneider, who has consistently shown an abusive and bullying disrespect to members who voice an opinion other than his own.”

In a statement, Schneider, a candidate for City Council, called Seddio a “bully” who is “used to getting his way.”

In an earlier interview, Schneider noted: “You can’t ignore the words of the LGBT community and its leaders and do something like this and then go home and call yourself an ally and put up your rainbow flag and march in the parade.”

The meeting was expected to be contentious after the two rules were conflated. The Lambda Independent Democrats, an LGBTQ political club in Brooklyn, compared it to “pinkwashing,” a term describing someone taking pro-LGBTQ initiatives to come off as more politically progressive. For Peña, advancing greater representation should not come at the risk of reducing powers to rank-and-file members.

“It feels inauthentic, and it feels as if they're using mine and other people's identity to take over to take power. And it feels kind of gross,” Peña added.

Eventually, the timeframe for when members could submit their appointees was extended to December 6th. But the damage was done.

“I think people are starting to pick up on the divisions and the kind of the larger identity questions that the party is grappling with, at a national level,” said Kristina Naplatarski, a district leader in the 50th Assembly District backed by the New Kings Democrats. “But I think folks really need to be aware of the fact that these issues seep down through every level at the party, including down to the county level.”

Bichotte—who was not at the December 2nd meeting—wrote an op-Ed in the Brooklyn Paper touting party unity to “disavow comments and bullying that derailed the meeting and offended participants and viewers.”

“[S]ome comments made during the meeting were unacceptable and not reflective of the diverse, forward-thinking, united Democratic Party we are building,” she wrote. “No one District Leader speaks for our party as a whole, not even the last party chair.”

With reporting contributed by WNYC’s Brigid Bergin.

This article has been updated with additional information regarding a court decision.