Kagan says Supreme Court conservatives have made American political system a ‘nightmare’ | Elena Kagan

Elena Kagan this week criticized rulings by the conservative majority of the US Supreme Court, arguing that its recent rulings on redistricting and campaign finance had undermined American democracy.

“The Court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of its decisions on the functioning of the political system,” Kagan, one of the Court’s three liberal justices, said during a discussion at the Catholic University Law School in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, according to multiple reports.

She noted that the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, “has created a democracy that does not work as well as it should.”

Kagan’s remarks come just two weeks before the midterm elections and amid battles over congressional redistricting. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, gutting a significant portion of the Voting Rights Act. In June, the court also struck down campaign finance restrictions limiting the amount political parties could spend on candidates. The two decisions were split 6-3 along ideological lines.

During Tuesday’s discussion, Kagan, who was nominated by Barack Obama, called voting rights “fundamental” and said: “If you bring down democracy, if you get a healthy, well-functioning political system, then you can count on that political system for a wide range of outcomes.” »

Kagan also took aim at the court’s 2019 ruling that federal courts should not police a practice known as partisan gerrymandering.

As a result, she said, “both political parties have engaged in a race to the bottom when it comes to these partisan gerrymanders, effectively depriving masses of citizens of their right to electoral equality.”

Kagan said the move pushed political candidates “away from the center, toward the wings, toward the extremes, because the only thing anyone has to worry about is being primary.”

“This makes what I unfortunately consider to be an overly polarized country even more so,” she continued. “In this election, and in future elections, we’re seeing large states with significant numbers of people who vote for Republicans and who vote for Democrats, and states are going to be tempted to go all red or all blue in a way that I think is very destructive to our democracy. »

Kagan also criticized the court’s rulings on campaign finance rules and increasing amounts of money in politics.

“The American people look around at this political system and think that all this money going to chase all these political candidates is a nightmare,” she said. “And they’re right.”