Justice Elena Kagan has delivered one of the bluntest warnings of the midterm season about the court she sits on, telling a Washington audience that the Supreme Court's conservative majority has damaged American democracy and left the country with a political system that does not work as well as it should. Her remarks, made on October 20 at the Catholic University's law school and gaining fresh attention one week before the November 3 midterms, put voting rights, gerrymandering and money in politics at the centre of the election debate.
Kagan spoke at an hour-long event at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in Washington, in conversation with law professor J. Joel Alicea, a former clerk to Justice Samuel Alito who directs the school's Center for the Constitution and Catholic Intellectual Tradition. The centre had previously hosted several of the court's conservative justices; this was Kagan's first time speaking on the campus.
Alicea opened by inviting Kagan to expound on her dissenting views in election law, an area he acknowledged was plainly important to her. Her answer was unsparing. "The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings on how the political system works," she said. "The court has created a democracy that does not work as well as it should."
"I do think it's just about the most important thing that the court does," Kagan said of election law. Describing voting rights as "foundational", she added: "If you basically get democracy down, if you get a well-functioning, healthy political system then you can count on that political system for a wide range of outcomes."
Her criticism was especially timely. She spoke two weeks before the midterms, against the backdrop of a nationwide redistricting scramble, a flood of campaign money and challenges to democratic norms in the era of President Donald Trump. The remarks were reported by Reuters, the Associated Press and CNN, and have been widely shared again as the final week of voting began.
Kagan, one of the three liberals on the nine-member bench alongside Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, has dissented as the court's 6-3 conservative majority has narrowed voting rights protections over more than a decade. Three decisions dominated her remarks.
The first was Louisiana v. Callais, handed down in April 2026. In a 6-3 ruling written by Justice Alito, the majority held that Louisiana's creation of a second majority-Black congressional district amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, finding that the Voting Rights Act did not require the additional district. Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented, arguing that the decision weakened protections meant to prevent minority voters from being denied an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. In her dissent she accused the majority of changes that "eviscerate the law".
The second was Rucho v. Common Cause, the court's 2019 decision that federal judges cannot throw out congressional maps for being too partisan. Kagan's dissent in that case was especially forceful, and she returned to it in Washington. The third was National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, in which the majority rejected campaign finance restrictions, opening the door to still more money chasing candidates.
Kagan said the consequences arrived fast. "I think what you saw, like literally in the few weeks after that decision was announced, was that a large number of Southern states decided to redistrict in order to get rid of Black districts," she said of the Callais ruling. Several southern states quickly began redrawing maps in ways designed to give White Republican candidates an advantage.
The heart of Kagan's warning was about gerrymandering itself. "Over the last couple of years especially, both political parties have been engaged in a race to the bottom in terms of doing these partisan gerrymanders, effectively depriving masses of citizens of their rights to voting equality," she said.
That race, she argued, distorts everything downstream. Partisan gerrymandering drives candidates "toward the extremes, because the only thing anybody has to worry about anymore is being primaried," she said. "It is making what I think is unfortunately a too polarized country even more so." In this election and the next, she warned, large states with substantial numbers of both Republican and Democratic voters are being "tried to turn all red or all blue in a way that I think is very destructive to our democracy."
Money, she said, compounds the damage. "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, a remark that lands as outside groups pour record sums into the 2026 races. The problem, she said, was that the justices in the majority showed "a lack of appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences of their decisions".
"If there's like any place where you should think about consequences, it is where your mission is to think about, 'Is this political system going to operate as intended by the Constitution and is intended by Congress?'" she said.
Kagan's own words carried the event. She was, she admitted, weary of losing these fights: "I have found myself in dissent in this area more than I would like," she said, dejectedly, according to CNN's account. She added that she is likely to remain on the downside in this area of the law for the near future.
The court's conservative majority, for its part, has defended its approach in its opinions. In Callais, the Alito majority concluded that the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to establish the additional district, leaving the state without sufficient constitutional justification for using race in its design. In Rucho, the majority said courts drawing districts for maximum partisan advantage presented a political dispute that federal courts cannot step into. Conservatives have separately ruled that key campaign finance regulations violate freedom of speech.
No response from the court's conservative justices to Kagan's October 20 remarks was reported in the coverage reviewed for this article. The remarks themselves, though, have become part of the closing argument of the midterm campaign for those warning that the rules of American elections are themselves on the ballot.
Kagan's intervention matters because the maps drawn now will shape not just the November 3 result but the balance of the House for years. Districts redrawn after Callais across the South could decide which party controls Congress, and with it the fate of the legislative agenda for the rest of Trump's term. When maps are drawn to be safe for one party, the decisive election moves to the primary, rewarding the most extreme voices and punishing compromise.
It matters, too, because trust in the system is itself a campaign issue. Tens of thousands of election observers are heading to polling places, courts are fielding last-minute ballot fights, and voters are being asked to believe in a process that a sitting Supreme Court justice says is not working as it should. Kagan's point was not that any single election is rigged, but that the rules now tilt the field long before a vote is cast.
And it matters because the court is not finished with election law. The justices will keep shaping voting rules, campaign finance and redistricting for years, whichever party wins on November 3. Kagan's dissents, once lonely, are now the clearest statement of the alternative view of what the Constitution requires.
Americans vote on Tuesday, November 3, with early and mail voting already under way in most states. Results in the closest Senate and House races may take days, and post-election litigation over ballots and counts is widely expected in at least some states.
Redistricting litigation will continue into 2027, as challenges to new maps work through lower courts and, potentially, back to the Supreme Court itself. The court's next term will also bring fresh election-law questions, and Kagan's October remarks will be quoted back whenever they arrive.
For now, her warning stands as the most direct judicial challenge of the season: a justice telling the country, one week before it votes, that the system she helps oversee is not working as it should, and that fixing it starts with understanding what the court's own rulings have done.
She said the Supreme Court's conservative majority has "blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings" and "created a democracy that does not work as well as it should", blaming rulings on voting rights, gerrymandering and campaign finance.
On October 20, 2026, at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in Washington, in conversation with Professor J. Joel Alicea.
An April 2026 Supreme Court decision, 6-3, holding that Louisiana's second majority-Black congressional district was unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. Kagan dissented, saying the ruling would "eviscerate" Voting Rights Act protections.
Drawing electoral district boundaries to give one party a systematic advantage. The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that federal courts cannot strike down maps just for partisan bias.
No ruling changes, but her remarks sharpen the debate over election rules, redistricting and campaign money in the final week before the November 3 vote.
Related coverage on US News Pulse: the Supreme Court's extended block on full SNAP payments, the dark-money flood in the 2026 midterms, and the tens of thousands of election observers heading to the polls.
Leave a Comment
| Today's Date:
