A 99-year-old federal judge locked in a two-year standoff with her own colleagues won a significant procedural victory Tuesday, when the misconduct case against her was reassigned away from the court that suspended her.
According to a new order issued by 11th Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts transferred the judicial misconduct proceedings involving Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman to the 11th Circuit Judicial Council. As The Federalist reported, the move shifts oversight of the dispute out of the Federal Circuit, where Newman’s fellow judges had been adjudicating a case they themselves initiated.
Newman, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for more than four decades and is currently the oldest serving federal judge in the country.
A Suspension That Never Ended
The matter traces back to March 2023, when Federal Circuit Chief Judge Kimberly Moore and the court’s Judicial Council suspended Newman over what were described as concerns about her mental and physical health. That suspension was indefinite, and it remains in effect today — barring Newman from hearing cases before the court she has sat on since 1984.
Newman and her counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance contested the suspension as unlawful from the outset. Their argument has been that the Judicial Council’s action amounted to a de facto removal of a sitting judge, a step they say is unconstitutional and runs afoul of the 1980 Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, the statute that governs how misconduct and disability complaints against federal judges are supposed to proceed.
The litigation that followed largely turned on a jurisdictional question rather than the underlying merits. In 2024, D.C. District Judge Christopher Cooper rejected Newman’s claims, holding that federal courts could not hear the case and that Newman needed to seek relief through the U.S. Judicial Conference instead. Cooper cited a prior D.C. Circuit decision in reaching that conclusion. A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit — composed entirely of Democratic appointees — upheld Cooper’s ruling on similar grounds in August 2025.
Newman then took her case to the Supreme Court. In her petition, she warned that allowing the indefinite suspension to stand would set a troubling precedent: that federal judges could effectively remove colleagues they disagree with, without any court ever reviewing the substance of the action.
“This administrative removal of a judge who is famous for dissenting from her colleagues, by those same colleagues, with judicial refusal to review the merits of the action, undermines the judicial independence that is a vital foundation of our constitutional design,” the filing stated. “Every judge who gets crosswise with her chief judge or her colleagues must now worry whether similar tactics could be used to remove them.”
The Supreme Court declined to take up her petition on June 15, issuing no explanation for the denial.
How the Transfer Came About
Tuesday’s order from Pryor shed light on a move that had not previously been public. Roberts, who presides over the U.S. Judicial Conference, transferred Newman’s case — along with “any pending or new complaints relating to the same subject matter” — to the 11th Circuit Judicial Council on Aug. 19.
Pryor disclosed the transfer at Newman’s own request. According to the order, Newman sought the disclosure “to maintain public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to redress misconduct or disability.”
The NCLA issued a statement Tuesday welcoming the reassignment, calling it “welcome news.” The transfer does not resolve the substance of Newman’s challenge or lift her suspension; it changes which judicial body handles the misconduct proceedings. But it represents the first meaningful shift in the case’s trajectory since the Supreme Court declined to intervene.
Why the Fight Matters Beyond One Judge
On its face, the dispute is about one jurist’s health and her fitness to serve. But Newman’s legal team has framed it in broader terms, arguing that the mechanism used against her — an indefinite suspension imposed by a chief judge and judicial council, with no appellate court willing to examine the merits — could be turned against any judge who diverges from a colleague’s preferences.
Newman has built a reputation on the Federal Circuit for dissenting from her colleagues, particularly in patent cases, where she has long been a critic of how the court handles certain doctrinal questions. Her lawyers argue that this independence is precisely what made her a target, and that the courts’ repeated refusals to reach the substance of her claims left the suspension effectively unreviewable.
The Federal Circuit has not issued a substantive public statement on Tuesday’s order. The practical effect of the transfer is that complaints concerning Newman will now be handled by the 11th Circuit Judicial Council rather than the body that placed her on suspension — a change that removes the appearance of the originating court judging its own conduct.
Newman’s suspension remains in place for now, and the underlying constitutional questions her lawyers raised have still not been addressed by any court on the merits. The Supreme Court’s June denial left those arguments unresolved, and the D.C. Circuit panel’s 2025 ruling rested on procedural grounds rather than an assessment of whether the Judicial Council overstepped its authority.
Whether the 11th Circuit takes a different view of those questions — or whether it simply inherits the same jurisdictional constraints that frustrated Newman in Washington — is the next open question in a case now well into its third year.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/10/08/rogue-judges-handed-major-loss-in-unconstitutional-scheme-to-remove-their-colleague/