Judicial Conduct Panel Denies Newman’s Reinstatement Bid (1)

A panel of seven appellate and district court judges rejected Judge Pauline Newman’s effort to regain her position on the Federal Circuit, where the 98-year-old jurist was suspended by her colleagues.

The administrative committee, part of the US Judicial Conference, said in a Tuesday decision the appeals court’s “renewal of Judge Newman’s suspension is neither contrary to the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act” nor unconstitutional, and the court’s separate decision not to transfer its investigation of Newman to judges in another circuit “does not violate her Fifth Amendment right to procedural due process.”

Newman, the nation’s oldest active federal judge, has been blocked from getting new case assignments for nearly three years. Although the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s investigation initially focused on Newman allegedly showing signs of cognitive impairment, the court based its back-to-back one-year suspensions—which Newman has challenged administratively—on her refusal to undergo a neuropsychological exam and to turn over certain medical records.

The judge has been fighting her suspension on two tracks. Administratively, the conference’s Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability reviews disciplinary decisions by judicial councils for the 12 federal appellate courts. And in the courts, she petitioned the US Supreme Court to hear her case in mid March.

In fall 2025, Newman challenged the latest suspension order at the committee, which has previously sided with her Federal Circuit colleagues in the dispute.

It did so again in its latest ruling and also made a point in a footnote to say it had “considered the merits of Judge Newman’s as-applied constitutional arguments.”

The judge’s Supreme Court petition argued, among other things, that the committee hadn’t thoroughly vetted her as-applied constitutional arguments, and this left her without a forum to raise them, since the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it could only consider facial constitutional challenges.

Newman’s arguments included that the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act only allows court disciplinary bodies to suspend a judge on a “temporary basis for a time certain, and, given the duration of her benching it cannot be considered “temporary.”

The committee said that the Federal Circuit judges had satisfied the statute, however, by “setting the suspension for a period of one year, subject to reconsideration if Judge Newman undergoes a medical examination” or renewal if she continues to resist doing so.

The committee also took issue with Newman’s characterization of her punishment as being “the longest suspension every imposed by a judicial council.” They pointed to a 2008 investigation that led to multiple suspensions—and ultimately to the impeachment— of G. Thomas Porteous Jr., who was a district judge in Louisiana.

In that investigation, Porteous was initially put on a temporary suspension before being issued a two-year suspension that was later extended an additional two years, the committee wrote in a footnote.

Newman is represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

The case is In Re Complaint No. 23-90015, U.S. Judicial Conf. Comm. Rev. Cir. Council Conduct & Disability, 25-02, affirmed 3/24/26.