A Federal Judge Melted Down in Texas’s Gerrymandering Wars

Perhaps the most striking moment comes five pages in, when Smith asked readers to forgive his haste and any flaws in his reasoning or demeanor that might come with it. “In the interest of time, this dissent is, admittedly, disjointed,” Smith wrote. “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.” In short, he asked for a grace that he would plainly not give to his colleagues.

The result is a judicial scandal, though perhaps not the one that Smith intended. Here we have a federal judge who used his official position to launch personal attacks on fellow judges’ integrity, as well as partisan attacks on various litigants, plaintiffs, witnesses, and unrelated parties. He appears to be driven by political animus toward progressives, “Soros money,” and the “Democrat Party” [sic], which seems so natural to him that he is willing to memorialize it in a judicial opinion.

It is hard to imagine why any progressive legal organization or plaintiff could ever be confident in his impartiality after this, especially in voting rights cases. If Brown’s opinion is truly as flawed as Smith claimed, then it will be obvious to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and to the Supreme Court, neither of which has been accused of excessive sympathy with progressives in recent years.