The Federal Circuit issued a one-year suspension barring Judge Pauline Newman from hearing cases back in 2023. That order was renewed in 2024…. and again in 2025. The window for a fourth renewal is open right now. How can federal judges functionally strip a colleague of her office? Well, theoretically, they can’t. And yet here we are.
But a new bill might finally put a stop to this.
Judge Newman is 99 years old, a Reagan appointee who joined the Federal Circuit in 1984. Say what you will about the relative merits of judges sticking around into their 90s, but until lawmakers impose some sort of federal judicial term limit, Judge Newman is a duly appointed federal judge who should continue to serve in good behavior unless Congress sees fit to impeach and remove her.
Instead, her fellow judges decided they didn’t want her hearing cases anymore. Invoking the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980, the circuit just stopped giving her work, suggesting that she was no longer fit for the job. Judge Newman has declined to sit with the neurological expert chosen by the other judges, but she went out and secured a clean bill of health from a leading expert in the field and the rest of the judges just shrugged and produced a children’s cartoon of themselves without including their legally appointed colleague.
Where was the House of Representatives in all this? Well, Rep. Darrell Issa has a bill to name the Federal Circuit’s courtroom after Pauline Newman. So Congress is on pace to get her name on the door before it gets her back through it.
But that may be changing. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald just introduced a bill to reform the Judicial Conduct and Disability Reform Act to end the stealth impeachment loophole. In a statement, Fix the Court executive director Gabe Roth noted that “developments like Judge Newman’s suspension and Judge Ross’ misbehavior underscore the need for modernization.” Judge Eleanor Ross, of course, continues to sit in Georgia after a wild report revealing sex in chambers with a senior police official.
Existing law prevents judges from removing their peers, but it includes an exception allowing judges to stop assigning cases to another judge on “a temporary basis for a time certain” while reviewing a complaint. The Federal Circuit just keeps pointing to that as it issues one-year suspensions while making zero effort to resolve the dispute.
Fitzgerald’s new legislation would impose a two-year cap on this loophole, after which the judge is reinstated and the complaint record goes to the House. If the House sees fit to impeach, so be it. It returns the power to the constitutionally appropriate institution.
Another provision would require a chief circuit judge to ask the Chief Justice to move a complaint against a circuit judge out of circuit once it survives initial review. That’s the opposite of what happened in Judge Newman’s case, where Chief Judge Kimberly Moore initiated the complaint, Moore’s judicial council adjudicated it, and Judge Newman lost the right to do her job without the complaint ever leaving the building.
Judge Eleanor Ross, the bill’s other silent co-author, received a private reprimand from the Eleventh Circuit without realizing it included enough breadcrumbs to lead AI to identify the job in about 5 minutes. The Judicial Conference’s Conduct and Disability Committee affirmed this decision because under the current law it’s limited to reviewing circuit determinations for abuse of discretion. The new legislation would make that review de novo.
The same chief judge, two weeks ago, tossed the misconduct complaint against Judge Roy Altman over the “terror scarf” business. At least the leniency is ideologically evenhanded!
While the Newman and Ross cases cut different directions, the common theme is giving fellow judges too much power over their peers. The Constitution decided that the legislative branch should be the ones deciding if a judge still meets the standard of “good behavior,” and barring a more fundamental structural change, that’s who should be making these calls one way or the other.
Of course, the House just canceled all further votes through election day, a measure designed to protect Pete Hegseth from impeachment and the White House from more Epstein file releases. So it looks like this bill will have to wait. But for the first time in a long time, it feels like there’s some momentum to do something about judicial conduct.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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