The court said that because Reinhardt was no longer a judge when the decision in the case was filed, « the Ninth Circuit erred in counting him as a member of the majority. »
Federal judges can’t rule from beyond the grave, the Supreme Court said Monday.
The high court said in an unsigned opinion that a federal court can’t count the vote of a judge who died in a decision issued after the judge’s death. The justices said “federal judges are appointed for life, not for eternity.”
The case the court was ruling on involved Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Reinhardt died on March 29,2018 but was listed as the author of a decision issued 11 days after he died. A note on the decision said that Reinhardt, who was 87 when he died, “fully participated in this case” and that voting on it, his opinion and opinions written by other judges were completed and final before his death.
But the Supreme Court said that it was “not aware of any rule or decision of the Ninth Circuit that renders judges’ votes and opinions immutable at some point in time prior to their public release.
