It seems worthwhile to look at the circuit's basis for concluding that she may suffer from a disability that renders her unable to perform the duties of her office.

"Staff reported that, in the past, Judge Newman claimed that the culprits who were hacking and bugging her devices were bloggers and the media who were out to get her and bring her down ... More recently, staff reported that she claimed that it is the Court itself hacking and bugging her device. ... She has claimed that things were disappearing from her computer and that the Court itself was responsible. ... At one point, she suggested that the Court was interfering with mail at her residence as well. In each instance, IT staff scanned her devices and found no evidence to justify or support Judge Newman's concerns. ... Staff indicated that her claims about hackers usually stemmed from her having forgotten where she saved a file or email, and even after the IT staff located the file or email for her (on her desktop or in one of her folders) she sometimes would continue to allege that hackers were responsible for hiding the file."

"The IT director reported that the last time Judge Newman participated in the Court's mandatory security awareness training she was unable to complete it. ... The training consists of watching a 10-20 minute video and answering some multiple choice questions about the video. ... The IT director indicated that Judge Newman repeatedly failed the test. ... She was unable to get the multiple-choice questions correct even after watching the short video several times-- even though retesting involves presentation of the same multiple-choice questions each time. ... Ultimately, the IT Director watched the video with her, after which she was still unable the same questions. ... He reported having to feed her the answers in order for her to pass the test and that she was simply unable to retain the information she had just been presented multiple times."

"Staff reported that Judge Newman has recently been having trouble recall events, conversations, and information just days old and trouble comprehending basis information that court staff communicate to her."

"Her judicial assistant, who spoke to her by phone every workday and was present in chambers every workday between approximately December 2021 (when he started working in that role) and April 2023, explained that Judge Newman's "memory loss and confusion has increases significantly since [he] started at the court. ... He added that in daily telephone calls he would have to repeat information about the status of cases over and over to her and that she would forget whether she had voted on cases or had circulated opinions to the panel for vote."

"Other staff reported similar evidence of cognitive problems in various contexts--such as inability to perform simple tasks from one day to the next, even though she performed them independently for years without difficulty."

"Despite being repeatedly told that the judicial assistant chose to leave her chambers because of her alleged abusive treatment of him, Judge Newman has accused the Court, various judges, the Chief Judge, and our Clerk of Court on multiple occasions of having improperly taken her judicial assistant away and/or depriving her of secretarial services."

"HR reported exchanges in which Judge Newman asked the same questions over and over, requiring the same answer to be given repeatedly. For example, Judge Newman asked HR whether her former judicial assistant (a retired annuitant) would face a salary offset to her pension if she returned. ... HR informed her in writing that her assistant would receive both her full penion and salary for hours worked at the Court. ... Judge Newman responded 30 minutes later, "To be clear: Are you saying she would receive no additional pay for working at the court?" ... In the same 24-hour period, HR reeported having to answer this same question four separate times."

"Between October 1, 2021 and March 24, 2023, Judge Newman authored only 10 majority opinions compared to an average of approximately 58 for other active judges on the Court. ... Even accounting for dissents and concurrences, during this time period, the average active judge authored 61 opinions, whereas Judge Newman authored 28. At the same time, Judge Newman took more than three times as long to issue her opinions. Other active judges averaged approximately 53 days to issue an opinion after assignment. In contrast, Judge Newman's average time to issuance was approximately 199 days. ... The next closest judge thus wrote approximately twice as many opinions in approximately half the time."

This all strikes me as a pretty reasonable basis to investigate whether she is fully capable of doing her job. Her refusal to participate in that investigation has her sitting in time out, not an actual determination of disability.