One day after a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, the dissenting judge slammed his two colleagues, saying they rushed the decision and published their opinion before he even had a chance to finish writing his dissent.
Judge Jerry Smith, who sits on the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, published his 100-page dissent on Wednesday.
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In the preliminary statement, he spoke of highlighting the “pernicious judicial misbehavior” of US District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who wrote the majority decision in the case.
“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 said in the statement.
Smith accuses the two other judges of rushing to get their ruling out on Tuesday even after he told them he had not wrapped up his part of the case.
Judge Jeffrey Brown, a former Texas Supreme Court justice and appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in the majority opinion that there was “substantial evidence that Texas racially gerrymandered” its maps.
Smith disagreed vehemently with Brown in his dissent, arguing that the “obvious reason” behind the decision to redraw the state’s congressional maps is “of course, partisan gain.”
“Judge Brown commits great error in concluding that the Texas Legislature is more bigoted than political. I dissent,” Smith wrote. “It’s all politics, on both sides of the partisan aisle. George and Alex Soros have their hands all over this.”
Smith also mentioned California Governor Gavin Newsom in his dissent.
“Gavin Newsom took a victory lap in Houston to celebrate the Democrat redistricting win with Proposition 50,” he wrote. “That tells you all that you need to know – this is about partisan politics, plain and simple.”
Also in his preliminary statement, Smith gave a timeline of what happened before the release of the majority decision
Smith says that Brown told him last week that the majority intended to issue their ruling in coming days because they believed they could not wait any longer due to an election law principle that says courts should avoid making last-minute changes to how elections are run before the contests get underway.
Smith also said Brown sent him a note on Tuesday saying, “I’m sorry that we can’t wait on your dissent. Purcell compels us to get the ruling out as soon as we possibly can. It turns out that’s today.” Shortly afterwards, the majority opinion was released.
“This outrage speaks for itself,” Smith wrote in his statement. “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, or they could have waited for the dissent in order to join issue with it. What indeed are they afraid of?”
CNN and the Texas Tribune contributed to this article