Kagan Says Supreme Court Rulings Have Undermined Democracy
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has said that recent rulings by the court's conservative majority on redistricting and campaign finance have undermined American democracy. She made the remarks on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, during a discussion at Catholic University's Columbus School of Law in Washington, about two weeks before the 2026 midterm elections.
The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Kagan was appointed to the court by Barack Obama. Speaking at the law school, she said the court “has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works,” using a word that means harmful. Reuters reported that she described the rulings as “destructive to democracy.”
The rulings she discussed include one in April, when the court struck down Louisiana's congressional map. That decision effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act, the federal law protecting voters' access to the ballot. Redistricting, the redrawing of electoral district boundaries, is at the center of the dispute. In a dissent, a written opinion disagreeing with the majority, Kagan said the majority had effectively finished a yearslong pursuit of the law.
In June, the court struck down limits on how much political parties may spend on candidates. Both the Louisiana decision and the party-spending ruling were decided 6-3 along ideological lines. The majority has ruled that key campaign finance regulations violate freedom of speech. AP reported that Kagan said money chasing political candidates is a nightmare that people across the country recognize.
Kagan also criticised a 2019 decision holding that federal courts should not police partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing district lines to favour one party. She said that decision had led both parties into a race to the bottom on partisan gerrymanders.
AP reported that Donald Trump has set off a wave of redistricting and is trying to keep Republicans' slim House majority in the November election. Kagan pointed to tariffs, birthright citizenship and mail ballots as areas where the Supreme Court has pushed back against Trump.
