WASHINGTON — Justice Elena Kagan on Tuesday faulted the conservative majority on the Supreme Court for a run of election decisions she said have pushed the country further apart politically and left its democracy working worse than it should.
Speaking two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms at the law school of Catholic University, the liberal justice singled out three lines of rulings she had opposed in dissent: the 2019 decision that put partisan gerrymandering beyond the reach of federal courts, decisions striking down limits on campaign spending, and a series of cases that narrowed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, including one this year.
Kagan argued the majority failed to grasp how those decisions would play out in practice. She said the gerrymandering ruling in particular set off a contest between the two parties to draw the most lopsided maps possible, which she said strips voters of equal say and rewards candidates who play to the extremes because only the primary matters. Texas began a new round of mid-decade map drawing this year at the urging of President Donald Trump, and other states, including California, followed.
On campaign finance, she said many Americans look at the flood of money into politics with dismay and are right to do so.
She also questioned a ruling this year that handed the president more control over federal agencies Congress had designed to be independent, warning about the risk of one president being able to overpower the rest of the government.
Yet Kagan pushed back on critics on the left who describe the court as a rubber stamp for Trump, calling that an unfair charge. She noted that the justices ruled against him on sweeping tariffs, his bid to redefine birthright citizenship, his attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and his deployment of the National Guard for immigration enforcement. The court remains deeply conservative, she said, but has clearly resisted the president in some major cases.
Kagan, an Obama appointee and one of three liberals on the 6-3 court, said the bench worked better when it was more balanced. She recalled the months after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, when eight justices had to find compromise, and said that period gave the court a legitimacy that helps keep the country stable.
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