Law & Crime..
U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, 96, was suspended from hearing cases after the Judicial Council of the Federal Circuit unanimously found that the judge’s refusal to submit to a mental examination was improper. Newman, a Ronald Reagan appointee, was, until the council’s order, the oldest federal judge still on the bench. (Screengrab via YouTube).
An attorney for the 96-year-0ld federal judge who refused to cooperate with an investigation into complaints about her diminishing mental capacity told a court that his client “does not need to meet any performance metrics to keep her job,” and should be allowed to stay on the bench despite problematic findings about her behavior.
In a new filing Friday, Newman’s lawyer, Greg Dolin, railed against his client’s judicial colleagues for violating the Fourth Amendment by investigating Newman without a warrant. In the brief, Dolin said his client’s fellow judges engaged in a “pattern of harassment” against the nonagenarian.
U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, currently the oldest judge on the federal bench, was appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Newman served for four decades on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit until her health was called into question when colleagues raised concerns over her failure to meet deadlines and numerous examples of alarming behavior. Newman was suspended by the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability in September 2023 after she refused to cooperate with an investigation into her mental capacity and that suspension was unanimously upheld in February.
Based on input from those around Newman, investigators ultimately found “overwhelming evidence” of Newman’s memory loss, lack of comprehension, and confusion, and said the judge was often, “frustrated, agitated, belligerent, and hostile towards court staff.” As a result, Newman was given no new cases over which to preside.
In response, the judge filed a federal lawsuit against Chief Circuit Judge Kimberly A. Moore and all the other Federal Circuit judges on the committee. Newman was represented in the lawsuit by New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a public-interest law firm that focuses on the “administrative state.”
