WASHINGTON — Justice Elena Kagan told students at Catholic University on Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s recent rulings have made American democracy work worse, singling out decisions affecting voting rights, campaign-finance rules and partisan gerrymandering. AP reported the remarks; Reuters independently reported them.
Kagan said the Court’s treatment of partisan map-drawing had helped produce a “race to the bottom,” with both parties incentivized to carve districts into whatever shape best protects themselves. That is not exactly shocking news to anybody who has watched a map get sliced up like a bad North Shore roast beef, but it lands differently when it comes from a sitting justice. AP’s account says Kagan also criticized rulings that weakened the Voting Rights Act and campaign-finance restrictions.
For the record, this was not a new ruling, injunction or emergency order. It was a remarkably blunt public warning about the cumulative effect of prior decisions—including the Court’s 2019 ruling that partisan-gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of federal courts. The Court’s official opinion is right there in black and white, because apparently democracy now needs a service manual. Supreme Court: Rucho v. Common Cause.
That distinction matters. Nobody got a fresh legal remedy Tuesday night. But with elections approaching, a justice saying the rules have rewarded harder partisan rigging is not bar chatter from the nonexistent Winchester McDonald’s. It is a warning from inside the building where a lot of those rules were made.
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