A feud inside the federal judiciary burst into public view this week after a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit judge accused his colleague of blatant misconduct in the ruling that blocked Texas' newly drawn, Republican-leaning congressional map.
In a blistering 104-page dissent released Wednesday, U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith — a former President Ronald Reagan appointee with nearly four decades on the bench — charged District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a 2019 Trump appointee, with what he called "pernicious judicial misbehavior" and the most "outrageous conduct" he has ever witnessed in his career.
The majority opinion, authored by Brown and joined by another judge, an Obama appointee, in a 2-1 vote, halted Texas' 2025 House redistricting plan on the grounds that challengers were "likely to prove at trial" that the state engineered a racially gerrymandered map.
Smith was unpersuaded — and furious not only with Brown's conclusion, but with how the ruling was issued.
Smith said his dissent was delayed only because Brown refused to wait for him to finish writing it before publicly releasing the decision.
According to emails quoted in the dissent, Brown alerted Smith on Tuesday morning that the ruling would be published that same day regardless of whether Smith had completed his response.
"I've attached a final version," Brown wrote. "We still intend to issue it today. I'm sorry that we can't wait on your dissent."
Brown justified the rush by invoking the Purcell principle, the long-standing doctrine discouraging courts from altering election rules or voting maps close to an election.
"Purcell compels us to get the ruling out as soon as we possibly can," Brown said. "It turns out that's today."
Smith fired back that no judge has the authority to silence or sideline a dissent.
"Judges in the majority don't get to tell a dissenting judge or judges that they can't participate," he wrote.
"Allowing such behavior to stand, he warned, would set a "horrendous precedent that 'might makes right,'" he added.
Beyond the process, Smith forcefully rejected Brown's conclusion that the Texas map was racially motivated.
He insisted the true driving force behind both parties' redistricting fights was raw partisan advantage, not racial bias.
He accused Brown of "creative" and "misleading" legal reasoning and scoffed at the suggestion that Texas lawmakers were "more bigoted than political."
"It's all politics, on both sides of the partisan aisle," Smith wrote, referencing liberal donors George and Alex Soros and pointing to California Gov. Gavin Newsom's celebration of Democratic redistricting gains as proof of the national stakes.
Smith also argued that Brown watered down the legal threshold challengers needed to meet to justify a preliminary injunction, calling Brown's framing "intentionally misleading at best and disingenuously false."
Texas has already appealed the ruling, hoping to salvage the map that Republicans view as a critical piece of their national redistricting strategy.
But Smith warned that Brown's opinion would not withstand scrutiny — writing with acid sarcasm that if there were a Nobel Prize for Fiction, "Judge Brown's opinion would be a prime candidate."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.