Justice Kagan Says Supreme Court’s Election Rulings Have Hurt Democracy, Two Weeks Before Midterms
Justice Elena Kagan on Tuesday accused the Supreme Court’s conservative majority of damaging American democracy with its rulings on redistricting, campaign finance and voting rights.
“The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings on how the political system works,” Kagan said at Catholic University’s law school in Washington, the Associated Press reported.
The liberal justice, an Obama appointee, dissented in each of the cases she criticized. Her remarks came two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections for control of Congress.
Kagan focused on the court’s 2019 decision holding that federal courts cannot police partisan gerrymandering, calling it a source of mounting polarization.
“Both political parties have been engaged in a race to the bottom in terms of doing these partisan gerrymanders,” she said, Bloomberg reported.
She said such maps deprive “masses of citizens of their right to voting equality” and push candidates “away from the center towards the wings, towards the extremes,” because many only need to win a primary.
That ruling laid groundwork for this year’s wave of mid-decade redistricting. Texas redrew its map at President Trump’s urging, and states including California answered with maps of their own.
Kagan also criticized the court’s April ruling limiting the Voting Rights Act. She said several Southern states moved within weeks to redraw maps and eliminate majority-Black districts, Courthouse News reported.
That April 29 decision limited use of the 1965 law as a justification for drawing majority-Black or majority-Hispanic districts. “If you think about what these opinions do, you kind of have an idea of why they’re wrong,” Kagan said.
She blamed the errors partly on “a kind of lack of the appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences” of the decisions, NBC News reported.
She said campaign finance rulings invited corruption. “The people of America look around this political system and think that all this money chasing all these political candidates is a nightmare, and they’re right,” she said.
The court’s majority has said partisan map-drawing is a political question beyond the reach of federal judges and that key campaign finance limits violate free speech, the AP noted.
Kagan also questioned this year’s ruling giving the president more control over independent agencies, warning of “one president being able to ride roughshod” over other institutions, according to NBC.
But she pushed back on claims from the left that the court simply rubber-stamps Trump, pointing to his losses on tariffs, birthright citizenship, mail ballots and use of the National Guard against protests.
“These were things that President Trump cared deeply about,” Kagan said. “It’s why the president sometimes really has not very nice things to say about the court.”
Still, she called the 6–3 court “deeply conservative,” saying it has advanced much of the conservative legal agenda, Courthouse News reported.
Kagan spoke in a question-and-answer session with Catholic University law professor Joel Alicea before students and faculty.
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