Left: U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman (YouTube). Right: Chief Justice John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Washington. (Shawn Thew/Pool via AP).
Pauline Newman, the nation’s oldest sitting federal judge at 99, has received a new opportunity to challenge her suspension after being sidelined in 2023 over concerns about her mental health.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts gave Newman’s case a new path by transferring it to another federal appeals panel. The move came after the Supreme Court declined in June to hear Newman’s request.
According to an order made public Tuesday, Roberts transferred the dispute in August from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit—the court that suspended Newman—to the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit. The change gives Newman another chance to argue that she should return to the bench following the Federal Circuit’s investigation into her fitness to serve.
Newman has consistently challenged the efforts to keep her off the bench, maintaining that the proceedings violate her constitutional rights and threaten judicial independence. Her attorneys at the New Civil Liberties Alliance said Tuesday that Newman had sought a transfer for more than three years in a statement.
“Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor just granted Judge Newman’s request to issue an order unsealing the transfer for public knowledge,” the NCLA said. That order made Roberts’ transfer public Tuesday. “The matter is currently pending before the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Council,” the group added.
The NCLA called the transfer “welcome news” after Newman and her legal team suffered several recent setbacks in court.
“NCLA is delighted both that this complaint has been transferred and that the transfer is now public,” NCLA President Mark Chenoweth told Law&Crime on Thursday. “We believe this action will help maintain public confidence in the judiciary’s ability to redress alleged misconduct or disability.”
Newman was suspended for an additional year in August 2025 after declining to undergo “neuropsychological testing.” She petitioned the Supreme Court in June after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and a Federal Circuit panel rejected her claims. In court filings, Newman argues that her due process rights were violated and that her suspension was unconstitutional and “not in accordance with the law.”
“This petition presents questions concerning crucial constitutional and statutory aspects of lifetime tenure and judicial independence, especially the availability of judicial review for intra-branch infringements on judicial service,” Newman’s Supreme Court petition stated. “Chief Judge Moore has invoked the Disability Act improperly to perpetually sideline Judge Newman until she gives in to the bullying and retires or takes senior status, doing far more than suspending her from new case assignments.”
As Law&Crime previously reported, Newman was initially suspended after complaints about her workplace conduct and demeanor prompted an investigation. Colleagues described behavior they found concerning, including unexplained delays and persistent confusion, leading the Federal Circuit to examine her mental fitness.
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President Ronald Reagan appointed Newman in 1984. During the circuit’s investigation, she allegedly declined to cooperate and failed to turn over medical records.
Newman and the NCLA filed a lawsuit in 2024 challenging the suspension. The organization has characterized her removal as a threat to “judicial independence and the Constitutional separation of powers.”
The Federal Circuit previously dismissed Newman and the NCLA’s lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds. The decision relied on the court’s interpretation of a 2001 Judicial Council ruling, McBryde v. Committee to Review Circuit Council Conduct & Disability Orders of the U.S. Judicial Conference. The NCLA later argued that the panel “opined that McBryde was probably wrongly decided and all but invited a petition for rehearing en banc,” according to a press release.
“As the panel realized, the McBryde court wrongly found that the Disability Act prevents any courts from hearing constitutional arguments challenging Judicial Council suspension orders and other disciplinary actions against judges,” the NCLA said. The group added that the panel acknowledged the 2001 decision had “misapplied” the Disability Act, relied on “a potentially strained reading of the relevant legislative history,” and itself “raise[d] constitutional concerns.”
In its Supreme Court petition, the NCLA accused the Federal Circuit of attempting to silence Newman, who was known as a “judge who is famous for dissenting from her colleagues”—the “Great Dissenter,” according to the filing. “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,” her attorneys wrote.
“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 lawyers added.
Newman and the NCLA also contend that she “has continued to speak and write before the legal community, and no finding of disability has been made concerning her in the years since the unlawful administrative orders began,” according to the Supreme Court petition. The filing says Newman voluntarily completed and passed three expert evaluations of her mental fitness and was described as having the mental ability of someone decades younger.
The Federal Circuit has countered that medical reports obtained by Newman for her legal challenge conflict with information submitted to the committee, including statements from a physician she cited.
Reports from specialists consulted by the Federal Circuit’s three-judge Judicial Council reportedly identified “major errors” in an assessment by a California neurosurgeon, as well as in other examinations submitted by Newman.
Newman’s team has claimed that she has been suspended longer than any judge in the “history of this country.”
The post Chief Justice Roberts pumps new life into oldest federal judge’s suspension battle, gives her another shot at proving whether she’s mentally fit at 99 first appeared on Law & Crime.
