Trump Judge Who Blocked Texas Redistricting Had Won GOP Praise

US District Judge Jeffrey Brown owes much of his judicial career to President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, but his opinion halting their redistricting plan to bolster Republican power nationally came as no surprise to judges who’ve worked with him.

“He’s just a straight shooter,” said former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht. “He believes in the rule of law.”

The federal district judge was appointed by Trump and clerked for Abbott when the governor was a Texas Supreme Court justice. He was also praised by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) as someone who “decides cases based on the rule of law” when he was confirmed in 2019.

The 160-page opinion from Brown, writing for a three-judge panel, dealt a potentially fatal blow Tuesday to Trump’s midterm plan with Abbott to add five new Republican House seats in Texas, a move meant to help Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives. It was the second time this month that a Republican-appointed judge gave the GOP a redistricting loss, after Utah Judge Dianna Gibson rejected a map drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature Nov. 10.

Brown’s 2-1 ruling rejected arguments from Texas that the rare mid-decade redraw was for political reasons, holding instead that race was a factor. The new lines Abbott approved target only minorities, Brown wrote, emphasizing that a letter from the Justice Department threatening legal action if Texas didn’t draw new districts made no mention of districts with White Democrats as the majority.

Brown ordered the state to proceed in the March primary elections with lines that had been in place before the redraw.

Texas is appealing Brown’s decision to the US Supreme Court, and the case could move quickly: The deadline for congressional candidates to declare for the primary is Dec. 8.

“Judge Brown is and always has been dedicated to the rule of law, and I have no doubt he did his very best to adhere to it in this case,” said Jeff Boyd, a former justice who served with Brown on the state high court.

Criticism of the opinion should be limited to “the relevant facts or law,” Boyd said, and those questioning Brown’s political motivations “are either ignorant or are consciously choosing to put politics above the rule of law.”

Abbott called the ruling “absurd” and “clearly erroneous.”

Paxton, whose lawyers defended the maps at a hearing last month, said “the radical left is once against trying to undermine the will of the people.”

The decision could have far-reaching national impact. After the Legislature passed the redistricting in August at Trump’s behest and Abbott signed it into law, other states joined similar efforts. This month, California voters approved plans for lawmakers to change state boundaries to create five new Democratic-controlled districts. Republicans hold a slim five-seat majority in the US House.

Brown, of the Southern District of Texas, was joined in the majority by Judge David Guaderrama, a senior judge in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas and an appointee of Barack Obama.

Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is expected to file a written dissent.

‘A Perfect Example’

“I feel comfortable that he was on the panel,” Paul Green, a former justice on the Texas Supreme Court, said of Brown. He called him “very bright, very thoughtful, a good judge.”

In 2023, Brown presided over a redistricting case involving a new map for Galveston County commissioner elections and ruled it diluted the county’s Black and Hispanic voters. The Fifth Circuit reversed him and in doing so overruled its own 36-year-old precedent that had let distinct minority groups team up for vote dilution claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Brown clerked for Abbott in the mid-1990s before moving onto private practice at Baker Botts LLP. Then he spent six years as a state district court judge, six more as a justice on a Houston appeals court, and yet another six on the state supreme court. It’s now been another six since his federal confirmation to a bench in Galveston near Houston in 2019.

As a member of the Texas high court, Brown in 2015 authored a 5-3 ruling declining to overturn a lower court order granting a divorce to two women who had married in Massachusetts. The decision sided against Abbott, who as attorney general lacked standing because his lawyers waited too long to intervene, Brown wrote. Abbott opposed the divorce as giving credence to same-sex marriage, which Texas at the time prohibited. The opinion came within days of the US Supreme Court decision making same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.

“He’s definitely conservative in his beliefs but will call balls and strikes as he sees them,” said attorney Randy Sorrels, former president of the State Bar of Texas.

The redistricting ruling “was a perfect example of who he is, who he has been, and who he always will be,” Sorrels said.

The case is LULAC v. Abbott, W.D. Tex., No. 3:21-cv-00259, 11/18/25.