Dissenting appeals judge in Texas redistricting case complains winners were George Soros, Gavin Newsom
A Texas state senator looks over a redrawn U.S. congressional map during debate over a bill in the Texas Senate Chamber at the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 22, 2025. (Photo by Eric Gay/The Associated Press)
A federal appeals judge used his dissent in a Texas redistricting case last week to “highlight the pernicious judicial misbehavior” of the judge who wrote the majority opinion and to complain that the main winners in the case are billionaire George Soros and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Judge Jerry E. Smith of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans disagreed with the majority decision that blocked a Republican-led effort to redraw congressional boundaries in Texas. The majority concluded that the new map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, while Smith contended that it was a permissible political gerrymander.
Politico, Law360, CNN, Law.com, Reuters and SCOTUSblog are among the publications with coverage.
Texas immediately appealed the decision by the special three-judge panel that included Smith and two federal district judges. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an administrative stay Friday that temporarily allowed implementation of the map pending further order, SCOTUSblog reports.
“In 37 years as a federal judge, I’ve served on hundreds of three-judge panels,” Smith wrote. “This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed.”
Writing at the Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, said Smith’s dissent is “a remarkable attack” on the author of the majority opinion, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown of the Southern District of Texas. The dissent also includes “gratuitous, personal attacks on the experts and lawyers on the plaintiffs’ side of the case,” Hasen said.
“Simply as a matter of strategy,” Hasen wrote, “if Judge Smith’s audience is the Supreme Court, I think he would have been far more effective if he had been measured and focused more attention on what he sees as the defects in the merits of the case.”
The majority opinion by Brown, an appointee of President Donald Trump, was joined by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama of the Western District of Texas, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. Smith is an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan.
Smith complained that Brown did not give him “any reasonable opportunity to respond” to the 160-page majority opinion issued Nov. 18, requiring him to issue a later dissent that posted the next day.
Smith said Brown told him that the majority wanted to publish quickly because of the Purcell principle, which says federal courts generally should not change election rules shortly before an election. Smith wasn’t persuaded.
“This outrage speaks for itself,” Smith wrote. “Any pretense of judicial restraint, good faith or trust by these two judges is gone. If these judges were so sure of their result, they would not have been so unfairly eager to issue the opinion sans my dissent.”
Smith said Brown rushed to issue the injunction before the Supreme Court could resolve racial gerrymandering issues in a pending case.
“Given Judge Brown’s creative read of the facts and novel approach to the law, he should have considered denying this injunction for that reason alone,” Smith said.
Brown is “no stranger to inconsistency” and is an “unskilled magician,” Smith wrote. “If this were a law school exam, the opinion would deserve an ‘F,’” Smith said of the majority decision.
Smith also asserted that Soros and his son Alex Soros “have their hands” all over the redistricting case. One of the plaintiffs’ top experts is “a paid Soros operative” and one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Chad Dunn, works with the expert at a Soros-funded Voting Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, Smith said. And counsel for one of the plaintiffs, the Elias Law Group, received money from Democratic entities and Soros, he said.
Smith added in a footnote that despite their “partisan circumstance,” all the attorneys in the case serve “with integrity and professionalism.”
Turning to Newsom, Smith said the governor “took a victory lap” to celebrate a redistricting victory in California, where voters recently approved a redistricting plan. The U.S Department of Justice is challenging the plan as an unconstitutional race-based gerrymander, according to a Nov. 13 press release.
The Texas case is United Latin American Citizens et al. v. Abbott.
See also:
Thanks to unprecedented gerrymandering battles, redistricting lawyers are busier than ever
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