Kagan: Supreme Court rulings have heightened political polarization

Justice Elena Kagan offered a pointed critique on Tuesday of recent Supreme Court decisions that opened the door for more political spending and weakened key voting rights protections, suggesting those rulings by her conservative colleagues have driven the country further apart.

Kagan, one of three liberal justices on the high court, said during remarks at Catholic University’s law school in D.C. that the court had “blinded itself” to “very deleterious” effects of those decisions, which have made democracy function worse than it should.

“The people of America look around and think that all this money chasing all these political candidates is a nightmare, and they’re right,” Kagan said, according to The Associated Press .

Kagan was referring to a 6-3 decision in late June that struck down federal limits on coordinated campaign spending, a win for a Republican Party that sought to leverage its cash advantage in competitive races ahead of next month’s pivotal midterm elections.

The justice also pointed to another ideologically split decision earlier in the year that made it more difficult to challenge congressional districts as racial gerrymanders and set off a wave of mid-cycle redistricting across the country, mainly in southern states.

Kagan, who dissented in each of the cases, said both parties had joined a “race to the bottom” in recent years to draw more favorable maps. It echoed her warning in a separate opinion dissenting from a 2019 ruling that held partisan gerrymandering claims were beyond the scope of review for federal courts.

“These gerrymanders enabled politicians to entrench themselves in office as against voters’ preferences,” she wrote in that dissent. “They promoted partisanship above respect for the popular will. They encouraged a politics of polarization and dysfunction.”

“If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government,” Kagan added at the time.

Kagan, now in her 16th year on the Supreme Court, nonetheless pushed back on the idea that the majority simply defers to President Trump, citing tariffs, birthright citizenship and mail ballots as areas where it has not sided with him, according to the AP.