Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said on Tuesday that rulings by the court’s conservative majority have made the country more politically polarized and less democratic. She made the remarks to students and professors at Catholic University’s law school in Washington, two weeks before the November midterm elections.
Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, said the conservative bloc has allowed a “race to the bottom” in partisan gerrymandering. Both parties, she said, are redrawing congressional districts to wipe out fair competition, which pushes candidates toward the extremes because the only contest that matters is the primary.
She pointed to the court’s decisions weakening the Voting Rights Act and campaign finance regulations, which she dissented from. In April, the court narrowed protections in the 1965 law, and Republican-led states moved quickly to redraw districts where Black voters held a majority or near-majority, according to Reuters.
“It is making what I think is unfortunately a too polarized country even more so,” Kagan said. She added that in this election and the next, large states with sizable Republican and Democratic populations could try to turn entirely red or entirely blue, which she called very destructive to democracy.
The conservative majority’s stated view, from a 2019 ruling, is that drawing voting districts for maximum partisan advantage is a political question federal courts cannot step into.
Source: Reuters
