In a highly unusual opinion, a US federal judge berated his fellow judge with a series of personal attacks, and suggested that the billionaire George Soros had a role in an opinion striking down Texas’s congressional districts.
The 104-page dissent from US district judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, was issued a day after two of his colleagues on a three-judge panel said the new congressional map Texas adopted earlier this year was likely unlawful because it discriminated against non-white voters.
But much of Smith’s dissent attacked US district judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee and the opinion’s author, accusing him of deliberately issuing an opinion before Smith had had a chance to write his dissent.
“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, going on to provide a play-by-play of his exchanges with Brown as he authored the majority opinion.
“If, however, there were a Nobel prize for fiction, Judge Brown’s opinion would be a prime candidate.”
In a staggering turn, Smith turned his attention to George Soros, Soros’s son Alex and the California governor, Gavin Newsom, none of whom were parties in the case. The name Soros appears 17 times in the opinion.
“The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the people of Texas and the rule of law,” Smith wrote.
Newsom successfully convinced California voters to pass a statewide ballot referendum that will add as many as five Democratic-leaning congressional districts in that state. Newsom announced the effort as Texas pushed ahead with its own new map to add five GOP-friendly districts.
Smith highlighted that several lawyers in the case are linked to organizations that receive funding from Open Society Foundations, a Soros non-profit. In a footnote, he said: “I emphasize that all of them serve, as officers of this court, with integrity and professionalism. Their partisan circumstance does not detract from the fact that they meet the highest standards of the profession and assist this court in the administration of justice.”
He also accused an expert witness of being a “Soros operative”.
Trump has attacked Open Society Foundations, a major donor of leftwing groups, and the justice department is said to be exploring ways to investigate it. The president has said George Soros should be in jail.
“It’s all politics, on both sides of the partisan aisle. George and Alex Soros have their hands all over this,” Smith said.
The reproach comes as judges across the country have faced unprecedented threats and harassment. Some have even begun to speak out against them more forcefully.
The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has said he will appeal the panel’s ruling to the US supreme court and ask the justices to step in and halt the ruling.
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, fired off a tweet in response to the dissent, sharing her support for it: “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
While many conservative legal figures cheered Smith’s opinion on Wednesday, the strategy could backfire in front of the US supreme court, Richard Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in a blogpost on Wednesday.
“Simply as a matter of strategy, 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, rather than to continually cast aspersions on the other judges, experts, and lawyers in the case,” he wrote.
“Maybe what he says will resonate with some of the supreme court justices, but I expect some will be turned off by this ranting.”
