A federal judge in Texas issued a blistering dissent this week after a three-judge panel threw out the state’s newly redrawn congressional map, delivering a ruling that immediately set off political and judicial shockwaves.
According to Fox News, Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, erupted over the 2-1 decision, calling it “the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed.”
Smith’s dissent, spanning more than 100 pages, repeatedly targeted the majority opinion’s author, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee. Smith accused Brown of “pernicious judicial misbehavior,” naming him hundreds of times throughout the filing.
The majority opinion, Smith claimed, would be “a prime candidate” for a “Nobel Prize for Fiction.”
He went further, insisting that “the main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom,” while “the obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law.”
Smith, who graduated from Yale Law School, wrote that “if this were a law school exam, the opinion would deserve an ‘F.’”
The fiery dissent accompanied the panel’s decision to temporarily block Texas from using the map in the 2026 midterms. The map added five new Republican-leaning districts, which the majority ruled were unconstitutionally drawn through racial gerrymandering. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has already appealed to the Supreme Court.
Adding to the drama, Smith noted that the other two judges — Brown and U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, an Obama appointee — released their opinion without waiting for him, leaving his dissent to land on the docket a day later.
“Any pretense of judicial restraint, good faith, or trust by these two judges is gone,” Smith wrote. He questioned why the majority “would not have been so unfairly eager to issue the opinion sans my dissent,” adding, “What indeed are they afraid of?”
Smith focused his criticism on Brown, saying that “true to form,” he preferred to “live in a fantasyland” and had engaged in “judicial tinkering.”
The case now heads toward the Supreme Court under significant time pressure. Texas candidates must declare for the 2026 cycle by Dec. 8, leaving the state in limbo as justices weigh a similar Voting Rights Act case out of Louisiana.
Brown opened his opinion by quoting Chief Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
He concluded that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” pointing to guidance from Department of Justice Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon urging Texas to address several “coalition” districts. Abbott responded by adding redistricting to the legislative agenda, prompting Democratic lawmakers to flee the state in protest earlier this year.
“The Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,” Brown wrote.
