Texas Redistricting opinion-There is a crazed dissent that is really strange

[LetMyPeopleVote]

I have read a ton of opinions over the years and this is the strangest dissent that I have ever seen. I have been volunteering on election law/voting rights matters since 2004 and Prof. Hasen is a great source of information in this area. This dissent is nuts

Judge Jerry Smith Issues His 104-Page Dissent to Yesterday’s 3-Judge District Court Holding that Texas’s Re-Redistricting is Likely an Unconstitutional Racial Gerrymander. Along the Way He Calls Out the “Pernicious” & “Outrageous” Behavior of Judge Brown in the Majority electionlawblog.org?p=153106

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T20:44:24.987Z

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=153106

It begins with a remarkable attack on Judge Brown (a Trump appointee) explaining that Smith was not responsible for any delay in issuing the decision:

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. I will set forth the details. The readers can judge for themselves.

And then turning to the merits:

The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros andmGavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent.
In the interest of time, this dissent is, admittedly, disjointed. Usually, in dissenting from an opinion of this length, I would spend more days refining and reorganizing the dissent for purposes of impact and readability. But that approach is not reasonably possible here because these two judges have not allowed it.

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.

[This post is in progress]

See also

Link to tweet

I tried to read this dissent but is very disjointed and poorly written.

I am curious to see if any of the other lawyers on this board have seen a dissent this strange

[Renew Deal]

1. Smith appears to be an activist more than a judge

Bringing Soros into this clearly demonstrates that.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. This dissent is NOT from Judge Brown but from Judge Jerry Smith

I did not see Judge Brown mention Soros in his opinion but I will look later

I was amused to see the Houston paper do a nice editorial on Judge Brown

Link to tweet

www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/redistrict-gerrymander-texas-judge-jeff-brown-21195989.php

Attorney General Ken Paxton alleges that this result is just a scheme of the “radical left.” That line probably has them in stitches down at the courthouse. The 160-page opinion was written by U.S. District Judge Jeff Brown, who Trump himself nominated to the bench in 2019. Before he joined the federal bench, Brown had been appointed to the Texas Supreme Court by Gov. Rick Perry and reelected twice to his seat by Texas voters. He had also been appointed by Perry to the 14th Court of Appeals and the 55th Civil District Court here in Harris County. Brown even served as a law clerk to Greg Abbott back when the governor was on the state Supreme Court.

Given those credentials, some Democrats might have feared that Brown would be a prime candidate to toss aside the law and, like far too many other Texas Republicans, put Trump first.

Longtime readers of the Houston Chronicle editorial board know better.

During his years as a Texas jurist, we routinely endorsed Brown as a man of integrity and sterling legal scholarship. In his last election to the Texas Supreme Court, we specifically noted Brown joined the dissenting opinion in a controversial case that found state licensing requirements for eyebrow threaders to be unconstitutionally burdensome.

“This is one of those cases in which, once the Court has decided whom it wants to win, the less said the better,” the dissent reads.

Brown told us that the law in question was “stupid but constitutional” — a phrase coined by the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. Marc Elias is wondering why Judge Jerry Smith is mad at the Soros

In an unhinged dissent in our Texas redistricting victory, a GOP appointed judge seems to believe that George Soros and I did...well, I'm not sure what...but he is very mad. Bigly.

— Marc Elias (@marcelias.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T20:54:50.879Z

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. It seems that I am not the only one who thinks that this dissent is strange

Oh it gets nuttier.

— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T21:03:23.547Z

Pretty sure if you asked ChatGPT to turn the "Sure, Jan" meme into a paragraph-length legal footnote, it would give you this...

— Jeremy Schulman (@jeremyschulman.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T21:30:04.089Z

[walkingman]

5. Although this is indeed "partisan gerrymandering" it is also obvious "racial gerrymandering" because

in order to get the obvious "partisan" result of more GOP districts, they have to diminish the votes of black and brown minorities. Two things can be true at once. Texas has used this approach for decades.

I worry if SCOTUS will overrule this simply because the conservative majority has already ruled against pre-approval saying that the days of racial discrimination are over.....really? They must be living in a different universe that I do.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. This dissent mentions the word "Soros" 17 times.

Link to tweet

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Deadline Legal Blog-Judge issues berserk dissent from ruling blocking Texas congressional maps

Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, spent much of his 104-page dissent attacking Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee in the majority.

Judge issues berserk dissent from ruling blocking Texas congressional maps/ Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, spent much of his 104-page dissent attacking Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee in the majority. www.ms.now/deadline-whi...

— (@jwwcan.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T15:50:34.357Z

https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/judge-dissent-texas-ruling-congressional-map-redistricting-rcna244875

When the majority of a three-judge panel led by a Trump appointee blocked Texas’ congressional maps on Tuesday, a footnote to Judge Jeffrey Brown’s 160-page opinion said that the judge who disagreed with the majority, Jerry Smith, “will file a dissenting opinion.” That 104-page dissent came Wednesday, and it began with Smith warning readers with a movie quote: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night!”

Perhaps that was a sign that what would follow would be unusual. In retrospect, it managed to undersell things......

But the judge kicks off the next 100 pages by proclaiming that the “main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom,” referring to the progressive philanthropist who has long been a bogeyman of the right and California’s Democratic governor, respectively. “The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law,” Smith wrote.

In his admittedly “disjointed” opinion, Soros’ name would appear more than a dozen times in ways that would look more familiar in dark corners of the internet — or, at best, on right-wing television or podcasts — than in the pages of a judicial opinion, such as the judge’s reference to an expert in the case as a “paid Soros operative” who “expects to receive $2.5 million in his Soros piggybank.”

Perhaps mindful that his words will be taken as he writes them, Smith drops a footnote to offer that he supposes “someone will say that in making these comments about the Soros connections, I’m expressing a political view, not the proper role of a federal judge.” But to a reader who would rush to that judgment, Smith explains that it’s “not ‘political’ for me to point that out by describing the political dynamics that are inherent in the litigation of redistricting cases.”.....

Once the smoke clears from the recriminations and the bluster and whatever else one might say about the style of Smith’s dissent, the legal disagreement might be boiled down to the following. The gist of Brown’s majority opinion is that the Texas map in question didn’t merely seek partisan advantage (which the Supreme Court has basically said is fine) but more likely represents an unlawful racial gerrymander. As Smith sees it: “This is about partisan politics, plain and simple.”