When a judge pauses or asks to leave

Judges now have an account screen of their own, and three things on it can reach you: a judge can pause new assignments across every festival they work for, ask to leave one of your seasons, and decide which festivals may invite them.

None of the three is a request for your permission. This guide covers what each one looks like from your side and what, if anything, you are expected to do.

The judge's own guide is Your account — the one to send anybody who asks what they can change.

A fourth thing reaches you now, and it is good news rather than a decision to absorb: an email when a judge accepts one of your invitations. It is written up with the offer it answers, on Invites sent.

What a judge can now do

They do this	You see
Pause new assignments	An email. Their queue stops filling. Their directory card reads "Paused, not taking new work". Their row on your season's roster does not change.
Ask to leave a season	An email, and an amber Leave requested pill on their roster row. They stay on the season and keep scoring until you remove them.
Block your festival	Nothing is sent to you, ever. Future invitations are refused with a neutral sentence that a judge who left the directory would also produce. Any invitation of yours they had not answered may also turn Declined — see Blocking is invisible, including its effects.
Leave the judges directory	They stop appearing in it. Same refusal sentence if you try to invite them from a stale page.
Accept or decline an invitation inside the app	Exactly what the emailed link always did — the status on your Invites sent tab moves. Judges no longer need the email to answer.

The two emails

Both are sent by a background job, so they arrive on the next run rather than the instant the judge presses the button. Replies go to your organization's support address when it has one — set it on the organization settings screen.

Subject	What the body says
*"Judge* has paused new assignments"**	Which of your festivals it affects, that any open assignments stay with them and keep their deadlines, that they will not be offered anything new until they resume, and that no action is needed.
*"Judge* has asked to leave your festival"**	The season, how many open assignments they hold, that until you act they stay on the season and keep scoring, and that removing them from the season's Judges screen is how you confirm it — anything unscored is reassigned then.

Four things about who gets them:

One email per person, not one per festival. Somebody who reaches three of the affected festivals gets one message naming all three.
It names only the festivals that person can reach. A colleague granted one festival is not told the judge also works on another.
Owners and organization admins are written to for every affected festival; everybody else is written to for the festivals and seasons they hold access to. Suspended members are not written to at all.
A pause is announced once. Setting or changing the automatic resume date afterwards emails nobody, and nobody is emailed when the judge resumes — neither when they resume by hand nor when their resume date arrives.

A judge who resumes before the email goes out is not announced at all. The job checks again on the way out and sends nothing rather than telling you about a pause that is over.

Declining an invitation emails nobody. Neither does blocking. Only accepting sends anything, and that message follows the same rules as these two — see Invites sent.

A paused judge

A pause is the judge's own, across the whole platform. It is not the same control as Pause judging access on your season's Judges screen, which is yours.

	Their pause	Your pause
Set by	The judge, on their account screen	You, on the season's Judges screen
Reach	Every festival they judge for	The one season
Cleared by	The judge, or their own resume date	You
Their roster status	Unchanged — still Active	Paused

Nothing on the season's Judges screen tells you a judge has paused their own account. Their row still reads Active, and their Completed and Awaiting review counts go on measuring their filed scorecards exactly as before. The email is the notice; the judges directory is the other place it shows.

What a pause does and does not do:

They are offered no new submissions, at any festival, until they resume.
Work they had already started stays with them, keeps its deadline and stays scorable. You are not expected to reassign anything.
You can still invite them to a season, and they can still accept. A pause is about new work on seasons they already judge, not about being reachable.
Their directory card reads "Paused, not taking new work" with an amber dot, and they drop out of the directory's Available now filter.
Nothing tells you when it ends. A judge who set an automatic resume date simply starts being offered work again on that date. If it matters to your planning, ask them.

A leave request

Where it shows

An amber "Leave requested" pill on their row, on the season's Judges screen, beside their status rather than instead of it — an Active judge who has asked to leave still reads Active, because that is still what they are.
The same pill in the header of their panel when you open them.
A dated "Asked to leave" line in their Recent activity, on the Progress tab of that panel. It carries no name beside it — the judge did it themselves, so there is no staff member to credit.

What it means

They have asked, not left. Until you act:

They stay on the season with the same access.
They keep every open assignment and can still file scores.
Their queue keeps filling as normal — a leave request does not pause anything.

How to resolve it

Remove them from the season. That is the whole flow — there is no accept button and no separate leave screen, because removing is exactly what accepting would do.

Open the row menu on the season's Judges screen.
Choose Remove from season and confirm.

Their row stays, marked Removed, and anything they filed stays attached to the submissions it belongs to. See Taking somebody off the season.

If you would rather they stayed, talk to them — replying to the notice reaches them. Nothing in FilmScorecard turns a request down, and the pill does not expire: it stays until the row is resolved.

The judge cannot cancel it either. A row with a live request offers them no second ask, so if you agree to keep them, the pill stays on their row until you remove them or the season closes.

"This judge is not accepting invitations"

Inviting somebody can now be refused because of a decision they made. Which message you get depends on where you invited them from:

Where you invited from	The message
A season's Judges screen, by email address	"address is not accepting invitations from this festival." The rest of the batch is unaffected — the other addresses are still invited and sent.
The judges directory	"This judge is no longer accepting invitations."

You cannot tell why, and that is deliberate. Any of these produces it:

The judge blocked your festival specifically.
The judge left the judges directory.
The judge is not open to invitations from festivals they do not already work for.

Nobody can look it up for you — not an owner, not a FilmScorecard administrator. A judge's blocked list is readable by that judge alone, and the refusal is worded so that a block and an ordinary opt-out cannot be told apart. Do not read the message as "they blocked us".

What to do about it:

Nothing was written. No place was created, no email was sent, and nothing needs undoing.
If you know the judge, ask them directly. They can unblock you, or turn their listing back on, and it takes effect immediately.
A judge already on one of your seasons is unaffected. Blocking never touches a season somebody is already judging, and a re-invitation to a season they declined or were removed from is the one case that is refused.

Blocking is invisible, including its effects

A judge can block a festival from two places, and the second one does more than the first:

From their account screen, which only stops the next invitation. Anything you have already sent them stays answerable.
From an invitation you sent them, which blocks the festival and closes every invitation from you they had not answered — across all your seasons.

Those closures arrive on your screen as ordinary Declined rows. They carry the same status, the same history line and the same date as a decline somebody typed by hand, and no email arrives either way, so there is no way at all to tell a block from a decline — not by looking, not by counting messages, not by asking support. That is deliberate, and it is the same principle as the refusal message above.

So: several invitations declining at once is not evidence of anything. It may be a judge working through their list, and treating it as a block is reading a signal that is not there.

What you cannot do

See whether a judge has blocked you, or blocked anybody. There is no screen, no export and no support answer.
See that a judge has paused, other than in the email and on their directory card.
Accept or decline a leave request as such. Remove is the only resolution.
Undo a removal. Invite the address again; their place revives with the roles you pick.
Stop the emails. A pause notice, a leave notice and an acceptance notice go to everybody with access to the affected seasons.
Be told a judge declined. Only an acceptance sends anything.

Judges — the season's roster: statuses, pausing, removing, and the row menu the resolution lives in.
Invites sent — every offer this season has out, and what reaches you when one is answered.
Judges directory — the pool, the availability line, and inviting somebody you have not worked with.
Your account — the judge's side of everything above.
Your invitations — the judge's side of answering and blocking.
How the judging queue works — including why a paused judge's queue is empty.