Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan took direct aim at the conservative majority she sits with, telling an audience at Catholic University's law school in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that the Court's rulings on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance have damaged American democracy and deepened the nation's political divide.
"The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings on how the political system works and has created a democracy that does not work as well as it should," Kagan said, according to ABC News. The remarks came two weeks before the November midterm elections, with control of Congress on the line.
Kagan, one of the Court's three liberal justices, pointed specifically to decisions weakening the Voting Rights Act, loosening campaign finance regulations, and the 2019 ruling that federal courts cannot step in when districts are drawn for maximum partisan advantage. She dissented from those decisions, and this year the Court further narrowed Voting Rights Act protections — a ruling that helped feed the redistricting fight now playing out across the country as President Trump works to protect the Republicans' slim House majority, according to the New York Times.
The Washington Post reported that Kagan's criticism also took in the conservative majority's Voting Rights Act and campaign finance jurisprudence, while NPR reported she accused the majority of blinding itself to the consequences of its decisions on voting rights, gerrymandering and campaign finance.
Kagan did offer one caveat that undercut the partisan framing: she said it is unfair to say the majority reflexively backs the president, pointing to areas where the Court has pushed back on Trump — including tariffs, birthright citizenship and mail ballots, per ABC News.
The speech drew immediate attention on social media. An Instagram post circulating this week referenced Kagan's remarks about President Trump, while other posts resurfaced her past dissents in the Louisiana voting rights case and a separate dissent joined by the Chief Justice — a reminder that Kagan's complaints about the Court's direction are not new.
Fox News Politics first flagged the story as Kagan turning on her own court with a dire warning about American democracy. The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hᴏft covered it under the headline that the "radical liberal justice" was attacking the conservative majority as midterms loom.
What Kagan's remarks change in practice is less clear. She offered no new legal mechanism, no proposed remedy, and no indication the Court intends to revisit the rulings she criticized. The 2019 gerrymandering decision stands, the campaign finance precedents stand, and this year's Voting Rights Act ruling stands. What her speech does is put a sitting justice's voice behind the argument Democrats will make in the final two weeks of a midterm campaign — that the electoral map itself was tilted by the Court.
Conservatives have long argued the opposite: that the Court's campaign finance rulings protect First Amendment speech, that partisan gerrymandering is a political question the Constitution leaves to elected branches, and that the Voting Rights Act decisions restored the law to what Congress actually wrote. Kagan's dissent is on the record in each case — but so is the majority's reasoning.
It is not yet known whether Kagan's remarks will be addressed by her colleagues or whether the Court will revisit any of the decisions she named.
Our Take
Here's what Patriots should notice: Kagan didn't give this speech in March. She gave it two weeks before an election that determines whether Republicans keep the House — and she framed the Court's rulings as the reason democracy itself is broken. That's not jurisprudence. That's a campaign speech delivered from a law school podium by a justice with a lifetime appointment.
The rulings she attacked were not novel. The 2019 gerrymandering case held that federal courts aren't the right forum for political districting fights — a point rooted in the Constitution's separation of powers, not partisan loyalty. The campaign finance cases rest on the First Amendment, which Kagan swore to uphold. And the Voting Rights Act decisions restored the statute to what Congress enacted. Kagan dissented in each — fine. Dissents are part of the job. But dressing up a dissent as a warning that American democracy is collapsing, timed to the midterms, is something else entirely.
Notice too what she conceded: the Court has ruled against Trump on tariffs, birthright citizenship and mail ballots. That's not the behavior of a rubber-stamp majority, and Kagan knows it. Her speech wasn't a legal analysis — it was a message to the Left's voters: the map is rigged, the Court did it, vote accordingly.
The Supreme Court doesn't exist to make democracy "work as well as it should" by Kagan's definition. It exists to apply the Constitution as written — even when that produces outcomes liberal justices dislike. If Kagan wants to change the rulings, there's a constitutional process for that. Attacking the Court's legitimacy on the eve of an election isn't it. The question for Americans: should a sitting justice be campaigning for one side two weeks before voters go to the polls?
