The U.S. Supreme Court on June 15 declined to hear Pauline Newman’s bid to overturn her suspension from the Federal Circuit, leaving the 98-year-old judge sidelined as her challenge to the ruling continues to run out of road. The decision means the suspension remains in place for now.
Newman, appointed in 1984 by Republican President Ronald Reagan, was suspended from duties in 2023 while the court investigated her fitness to serve. She had sought to return to the Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the justices’ refusal to take the case leaves that effort unresolved.
The dispute has turned on whether the court had the power to act and whether Newman was denied constitutional protections along the way. She told the Supreme Court that the Federal Circuit overstepped its authority, that federal law barred judicial review of her suspension and that the move violated her due process rights. She also argued that the suspension ran afoul of the constitutional provision giving Congress the power to remove federal judges through impeachment.
In a filing to the Supreme Court, Newman said Chief Judge Kimberly Moore had used the Disability Act to “perpetually sideline” her until she gave in to the pressure and retired or took senior status. Moore, represented by U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer, said those claims had no merit and that review of Newman’s suspension belongs to the Judicial Conference, not a federal court.
The record released by the court in 2023 said a panel of Federal Circuit judges had cited staff reports describing Newman’s memory loss, confusion, paranoia and angry rants. Later that year, a council of all the court’s active judges unanimously voted to suspend her, and the council found that she had refused to cooperate with the investigation into her fitness. A judge dismissed Newman’s federal lawsuit in 2024, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld that ruling in 2025.
That leaves Newman in a long-running fight over whether she can continue serving at all. The Federal Circuit’s suspension remains in place, and with the Supreme Court declining to step in, the path back to the bench is still blocked by the same unanswered question: who, if anyone, will decide whether the nation’s oldest federal judge can return to duty.
