Whether the judicial branch and its officials can be sued over its workplace misconduct policies, and whether those policies violate constitutional rights, is at the heart of a former public defenders attempt to revive her sexual harassment lawsuit.

On Wednesday, the visiting judges sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit  questioned whether the internal complaint process adopted by the Fourth Circuit—known as its Employment Dispute Resolution plan—is unconstitutional, or if procedures weren’t correctly followed by individual judiciary employees in the specific case at hand.