Jones was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on February 27, 1985, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, to a new seat authorized by 98 Stat. 333. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on April 3, 1985, and received commission on April 4, 1985, at the age of 35. She served as Chief Judge from January 16, 2006 to October 1, 2012, succeeding Judge Carolyn Dineen King.
Jones has been mentioned frequently as being on the list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States. A 1990 report from The New York Times cited her as George H.W. Bush's second choice for the Supreme Court vacancy filled by Justice David Souter. The Chicago Sun-Times and several other newspapers reported on July 1, 2005, that she had also been considered for nomination to the Supreme Court during the presidency of George W. Bush.
Legal philosophy
In her opinions, she has questioned the legal reasoning which legalized abortion, advocated streamlining death penalty cases, invalidated a federal ban on possession of machine guns and advocated toughening bankruptcy laws. In 2006, Chief Judge Jones found that a death row inmate who had filed a pro se motion to drop his appeal while his attorney was abroad, could not later reinstate his appeal. In June 2017, Jones dissented when the court found that a university did not violate the Due Process Clause or Title IX when it expelled a student for committing a campus sexual assault, as well as his girlfriend, who had recorded the assault and shared the video on social media. In May 2018, Jones wrote for the court when it found that Texas Senate Bill 4, which prohibits local governments or public employees from criticizing federal immigration enforcement or from praising sanctuary cities, did not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
''McCorvey v. Hill''
Jones attracted attention for her opinion in the case of McCorvey v. Hill, which was a request by the Norma McCorvey, the 'Jane Roe' of Roe v. Wade to vacate the finding of that case. Jones joined the Fifth Circuit in rejecting the petition on procedural grounds but took the unusual step of handing down a six-page concurrence to the judgment of the court. The concurrence credited the evidence presented by McCorvey and sharply criticized the Supreme Court's rulings in Roe and in the less famous case of Doe v. Bolton. She quoted Justice Byron White's dissent in the latter, describing the Supreme Court's decision as an "exercise of raw judicial power". She concluded: "That the court's constitutional decision making leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer not only about the abortion decisions, but about a number of other areas in which the court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of constitutional adjudication".
Ethics complaint
A group of civil rights organizations and legal ethicists filed a complaint of misconduct against Jones on June 4, 2013, after she allegedly said that "racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime," and are "prone to commit acts of violence" which are more "heinous" than members of other ethnic groups. According to the complaint, Jones also stated that a death sentence is a service to defendants because it allows them to make peace with God and she "referred to her personal religious views as justification for the death penalty". Jones allegedly made the remarks during a speech to the University of Pennsylvania Federalist Society. However, the speech was not recorded, and the ethics complaint was based solely on affidavits from audience members. In part because Jones was recently the Chief Judge of the Fifth Circuit, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts transferred the complaints to the judicial ethics panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. On August 12, 2014, the judicial ethics panel of the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the complaint, citing lack of evidence to justify disciplining Jones. The complainants appealed to the Judicial Conference of the United States, which affirmed the ruling of the judicial ethics panel in February 2015.
