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Dissent in Texas Map Derailing Reads Like
Indictment of Fellow Republican Appointee
Capitol Inside
November 19, 2025
A federal appellate judge issued a scathing condemnation of a colleague's integrity, competence and motivations on Wednesday in the lone dissent in a three-judge panel's ruling that temporarily blocked Texas Republicans from conducting congressional elections next year on a map they hatched this summer.
U.S. Judge Jerry Smith's angry excoriation of the majority opinion and U.S. Judge Jeff Brown as its author portrayed the plaintiffs' case as a George Soros operation with the wealthy Hungarian-American investor's name mentioned 17 times.
"The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom," Smith wrote. "The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law."
The Fifth Circuit of Appeals panel sent shock waves through GOP circles on Tuesday when it declared a U.S. House map that Republicans approved in August to be an unconstitutional product of racial gerrymandering. Brown instructed state officials to revive the current U.S. House map that was adopted in 2021 for the elections here next year. Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed the appellate ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday night.
U.S. Judge David Guaderrama, who'd been appointed to the bench by Democrat Barack Obama, sided with Brown while Smith cast the only vote in dissent in the Texas case. But Smith saves the brunt of his wrath for Brown - a former Texas Supreme Court justice who was elected several times as a Republican to state district and appellate benches before then-GOP Governor Rick Perry tapped him for the high court.
Smith accused Brown of "pernicious judicial misbehavior" amid claims that he'd been excluded by his two colleagues from active participation in the deliberations on the Texas case. Smith contended that Brown and Guaderrama reached a decision before giving him an adequate chance to complete an opinion in dissent for their review before a final judgment.
"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," Smith wrote.
While Smith mentions the president's name 69 times in the dissenting opinion that spans 104 pages, he declined to point out that Brown is a Trump appointee who's served on the federal appellate court since 2019. Smith has served as an appeals court judge since an appointment from Republican Ronald Reagan in 1987.
"The resulting dissent is far from a literary masterpiece," Smith remarked on the quality of the objecting opinion. "If, however, there were a Nobel Prize for Fiction, Judge Brown’s opinion would be a prime candidate."
Smith ended the analysis on a dramatic note. "This order, replete with legal and factual error, and accompanied by naked procedural abuse, demands reversal. Darkness descends on the Rule of Law," the 79-year-old jurist observed in the closing line. "A bumpy night, indeed."
The dissent in the Texas congressional case slammed Brown repeatedly and sought to give the impression that he'd been manipulated and intentionally tried to deceive.
"Judge Brown is an unskilled magician," Smith remarked. "The audience knows what is coming next."
Smith ripped the majority decision as the "most blatant exercise of judicial activism" that he'd witnessed in more than three dozen years on the court.
"Judge Brown has a lingering habit," Smith claims. "He correctly recites part of a legal principle, then veers off track along a spectrum—intentionally misleading at best to false at worst. The opinion is replete with selectively copying and pasting parts of legal rules or standards. Beyond that, things get dicey."
more to come ...
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