[2] Sloviter was nominated by President Jimmy Carter on April 4, 1979, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, to a new seat created by 92 Stat.

On April 4, 2016, then-Chief Judge Theodore McKee announced that Judge Sloviter would assume "inactive status" and stop hearing cases due to a serious medical condition, but she would remain active within the court's committees.

[2][5] In 1996, Sloviter was a member of a three-judge panel of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania which heard a challenge to the Communications Decency Act, Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, on grounds that it abridged the free speech provisions of the First Amendment.

On June 12, 1996, their decision blocked enforcement of the act, ruling that it was unconstitutional, in addition to being unworkable and impractical from a technical standpoint.

In 2007, one of her former clerks, Saira Rao, published a book commonly assumed to be based on the author's experience working for Sloviter.