In re Slagle

Background

A Court of Appeals sent a question up about whether someone can ask a higher court to force a single member of a three-judge trial panel to remove himself after that judge denied a motion asking him to step aside. The Supreme Court dismissed the certificate of question from the Court of Appeals and explicitly said it would not issue a broad ruling on which court must hear such petitions.

Reasoning

Justice White, joined by two other Justices, wrote separately to explain his view. He reviewed earlier cases showing the Supreme Court limits its review of actions by a single judge sitting on a three-judge panel and looked to the statutory scheme about three-judge courts. Relying on those examples, he said it is clear that a petition asking that a single member be forced to disqualify himself should be handled first by the Court of Appeals, not this Court. He cited past instances where the Court declined to review single-judge actions and where appeals courts were seen as able to give guidance.

Real world impact

This ruling is procedural: it dismisses the question and does not finally settle where all such petitions must go, but it signals that lower appeals courts are the likely starting place for requests to force a judge to step aside in three-judge cases. Litigants, trial judges, and appellate courts will follow appeals-court procedures first when these disputes arise, unless a future decision says otherwise.