It wasn't until 1933 that the U.S. District Court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia achieved equal stature with their counterparts in the rest of the country. It resulted from a lawsuit brought by Justices Daniel W. O'Donoghue of the D.C. Supreme Court and William Hitz of the Court of Appeals challenging the reduction of their salaries and those of other federal officials as part of the government's cost-cutting measures. The U.S. Supreme Court held that the D.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals were "constitutional courts" protected by Article III of the Constitution which prohibits reducing the salaries of federal judges.
