Conservative judge goes nuclear in dissent as GOP dealt stunning loss over election maps

A legal bombshell dropped this week as a three-judge panel in Texas overturned Republicans' move to dismantle five Democratic-held congressional seats, which, if the Supreme Court does not stay the ruling, is a massive blow to the GOP's efforts to rig congressional lines for themselves ahead of 2026. Conspicuously absent, however, was any published dissent from appellate Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee and the one judge who did not join the opinion.

On Wednesday, however, the dissent was finally published — and it was a lengthy screed in which Smith devoted multiple paragraphs to making outright personal attacks on the district judge, Jeff Brown, who authored the opinion, as well as accusations of judicial misconduct.

"In my 37 years on the federal bench, this is the most outrageous conduct by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved. In summary, Judge Brown has issued a 160-page opinion without giving me any reasonable opportunity to respond," wrote Smith, spending multiple pages complaining about how short-notice the majority opinion was and how major revisions dropped while he was out of town, giving him little time to write the dissent.

"The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent," he wrote after finishing detailing just some of his personal grievances with his fellow judge.

"The resulting dissent is far from a literary masterpiece. If, however, there were a Nobel Prize for Fiction, Judge Brown’s opinion would be a prime candidate," wrote Smith. "Judge Brown could have saved himself and the readers a lot of time and effort by merely stating the following: I just don’t like what the Legislature did here. It was unnecessary, and it seems unfair to disadvantaged voters. I need to step in to make sure wiser heads prevail over the nakedly partisan and racially questionable actions of these zealous lawmakers ... I’m using my considerable clout as a federal district judge to put a stop to bad policy judgments. After all, I get paid to do what I think is right."

"In 37 years as a federal judge, I’ve served on hundreds of three-judge panels. This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed," Smith continued. "There’s the old joke: What’s the difference between God and a federal district judge? Answer: God doesn’t think he’s a federal judge. Or a different version of that joke: An angel rushes to the head of the Heavenly Host and says, 'We have a problem. God has delusions of grandeur.' The head angel calmly replies, 'What makes you say that?' The first angel whispers, 'He’s wearing his robe and keeps imagining he’s a federal judge.' Only this time, it isn’t funny."

Brown's majority ruling, which extensively detailed evidence that Texas lawmakers illegally discriminated on the basis of race when they drew the map, came as a surprise to many legal observers, given that he is a right-wing appointee of President Donald Trump who previously served on the Texas Supreme Court with the blessing of Republican lawmakers.