Reagan Judge Rebukes Trump Appointee in Texas Voter Map Case (1)

Judge Jerry Smith of the Fifth Circuit berated a federal trial judge in an extraordinary dissenting opinion in a case involving Texas’s effort to redraw its congressional districts.

Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal appeals court, alleged that US District Judge Jeffrey Brown—who was appointed by Donald Trump—didn’t give him proper time or notice to draft his dissenting opinion in the case.

The opinion rejected the typically collegial tone that judges take with one another. It was issued one day after a divided three-judge court designated to review the redistricting plan blocked the effort by Texas to redo its congressional maps, finding they were likely racially gerrymandered.

“Any pretense of judicial restraint, good faith, or trust by these two judges is gone,” Smith wrote of Brown and Senior US District Judge David Guaderrama.

He said that Brown pushed to publish the majority opinion without giving Smith the time to read and draft a response to it. Smith said he was attending funeral services for another federal judge, and when he returned, worked through the weekend with his law clerks on the dissent before the majority opinion published Tuesday.

Smith also accused Brown of acting to reach his preferred outcome in the case, rather than following the law.

“This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed,” Smith wrote.

Brown didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Brown, formerly of the Supreme Court of Texas, received Republican praise as he was appointed by Trump to the federal bench in 2019.

‘Unskilled Magician’

Smith raised Brown’s prior ruling in another gerrymandering case, in which the trial judge had found a new map for Galveston County commissioner elections diluted the county’s Black and Hispanic voters. The full Fifth Circuit later reversed him, a decision that Smith cited in his dissent.

Smith said the Fifth Circuit recently ruled that "'[t]he most obvious reason for mid-cycle redistricting, of course, is partisan gain.’”

“Because the ‘obvious reason’ for the 2025 redistricting ‘of course, is partisan gain,’ Judge Brown commits grave error in concluding that the Texas Legislature is more bigoted than political,” Smith said.

Smith also took aim at Brown’s analysis in needing to hand down a preliminary injunction. He claimed the trial judge “has a lingering habit” of correctly sharing part of a legal principle but then “veers off track along a spectrum—intentionally misleading at best to false at worst.”

The plaintiffs were facing Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit precedent “stacked against them,” Smith said, on top of having to meet the high bar for the injunction.

“Nothing in any bag of results-oriented tricks can save that wished-for result,” Smith said. “Judge Brown is an unskilled magician. The audience knows what is coming next.”

Smith said that Brown didn’t properly weigh the expert testimony given by the drawer of the maps, Adam Kincaid, who said race wasn’t his motivator in crafting the new districts.

And he said Brown’s opinion “creates mayhem, chaos, misinformation, and confusion,” as the process for Texas’s 2026 elections is already underway. Candidates could begin declaring for office on Nov. 8.

“Unfairness is the word of the day, and this injunction is laden with unfair consequences,” Smith said.

Smith also published within the dissent a page-and-a-half long “non-exhaustive list of misleading, deceptive, or false statements Judge Brown put forward.”

The senior judge had opened the dissent by quoting Bette Davis’s character Margo Channing in “All About Eve,” saying “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night!”

“Darkness descends on the Rule of Law. A bumpy night, indeed,” Smith concluded.

Soros Ties Raised

Smith also claimed that billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his son Alex Soros “have their hands all over this.” He said the lawyers in the case are funded by George Soros, as was a lead expert in the litigation.

“The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom,” Smith wrote, referring to California’s Democratic governor. “The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law.”

Marc Elias, the prominent Democratic lawyer whose law firm was mentioned by Smith, said in a social media post that he wasn’t sure what the judge was accusing them of doing. He called the dissent “unhinged.”

LULAC v. Abbott, W.D. Tex., No. 3:21-cv-00259, 11/19/25.