WASHINGTON — Liberal Justice Elena Kagan sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s conservative majority Tuesday, saying it undermined democracy in a series of rulings, several of which sparked a new wave of legislative mapping that has increasingly eliminated competitive districts.
Kagan, who has been a dissenter in those cases, also took aim at the majority for rolling back campaign finance restrictions and, as she put it, for “eviscerating” the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, enacted to protect minority voters.
“Part of the reason the court got it wrong was sort of a lack of concern or proper understanding of the consequences of their decisions,” she said in a speech at the Catholic University Law School in Washington, DC.
“I think that in all of these areas, the Court has blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of its decisions on the functioning of the political system and has created a democracy that does not function as well as it should,” she added.
Kagan was specifically referring to the 2019 ruling that federal courts could not intervene to limit extreme partisan gerrymandering. She also mentioned a series of rulings that gutted the Voting Rights Act, including one this year that led Republican states to eliminate majority-black districts. The court has also repeatedly struck down campaign finance restrictions, most recently in June.
As the November 3 midterm elections approach, several states have redrawn their congressional maps to maximize the number of seats the majority party can win in that state. Texas kicked off, at the request of President Donald Trump, followed by other states, including California.
The 2019 redistricting decision was particularly harmful, Kagan said. As a result, “both parties have engaged in a race to the bottom when it comes to these partisan gerrymanders.”
Unbalanced maps deprive people of “their right to electoral equality” and have the effect of “pushing them away from the center, towards the backstage, towards the extremes” because candidates only have to worry about winning the primary, she added.
The Court’s failure to take action on the issue “further makes what I consider to be a country unfortunately too polarized,” Kagan said.
When states establish legislative districts that nearly wipe out the ability of many voters to elect the candidate of their choice, it is “very destructive to our democracy,” she added.
As for the increasingly unlimited amounts of money in politics, Kagan said many voters find it disconcerting.
“I think you know the American people look around this political system and think all this money, to chase all these political candidates, is a nightmare, and they’re right,” she said.
During the question-and-answer session with Professor Joel Alicea, Kagan also criticized this year’s Supreme Court ruling that gave Trump greater control over previously independent federal agencies, created by Congress to be free from political interference.
She questioned the wisdom of giving too much power to the president, saying there is a “danger that a president could ride roughshod over all other government institutions and the people.”
But Kagan also defended the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, against claims from the left that it is an automatic deal for Trump. She cited several decisions in which the president lost, including his attempt to impose drastic tariffs.
The court is “deeply conservative,” she said, but in some cases “it has definitely pushed back against the president.”
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