London Mayor Ken Livingstone will appeal against his four-week suspension from office for comparing a reporter to a concentration camp guard.
Mr Livingstone was suspended for a month from March 1st by a panel that hears complaints against local authorities.
It ruled he had violated a code of conduct and brought his office into disrepute after a Jewish group complained about comments he made to a Jewish reporter last year.
The mayor (60) said in a statement he had sent his lawyers to the High Court to appeal the panel's ruling and have the suspension put on hold pending the appeal.
The controversy erupted in February last year when a reporter for the city's biggest-selling local paper, the Evening Standard, questioned Mr Livingstone outside a party held for a gay politician.
Livingstone compared the reporter to a concentration camp guard and German war criminal. He later refused to apologise, saying the paper's owners had supported the Nazis in the 1930s.