Supreme Court justice warns conservative majority is destroying American democracy ahead of midterms

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan on Tuesday warned that the bench's conservative majority has damaged democracy and "created a race to the bottom" through congressional redistricting.

Addressing students at Catholic University's law school, Kagan—one of three liberal justices—said conservatives have intensified political polarization by failing to curb partisan gerrymandering, in which state lines are redrawn to favor specific candidates based on voters' political preferences.

Kagan stated that "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 noted that gerrymandering is pushing politicians "toward the extremes, because the only thing anybody has to worry about anymore is being primaried,".

"It is making what I think is unfortunately a too polarized country even more so," Kagan said. "In this election, and the next election, we are seeing large states with substantial numbers of people who vote for Republicans and who vote for Democrats, and the states are going to be tried to turn all red or all blue in a way that I think is very destructive to our democracy."

The court, maintaining a 6-3 conservative majority, gutted a core element of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act in April, which originally aimed to curb racial discrimination in voting.

That ruling sparked widespread redistricting across the South aimed at removing US House of Representatives districts with majority or near-majority Black electorates, as Republican-led states reacted. President Donald Trump's Republican Party is working to retain control of Congress in November's midterms.

Encouraged by Trump, Texas redrew its district boundaries last year to flip Democratic US House seats, after which Democratic-led California reconfigured its map to challenge Republican seats.

Kagan, appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama, argued conservative justices ignored the practical fallout of their voting rights ruling and a June decision striking down caps on party campaign spending aligned with candidates.

"I think part of the reason why the court got it wrong was a lack of the appropriate concern or understanding of the consequences of their decisions," Kagan said.

"I do think in all these areas the court has blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works and has created a democracy that doesn’t work as well as it should," she added.

Kagan added that the campaign finance ruling enabled greater potential for donor corruption.

"The one place where the court has allowed campaign finance regulation to operate is to prevent quid pro quo corruption, kind of money for favors, and the court never seems to see the opportunities for doing exactly that," Kagan said.

"I think you know the people of America look around this political system and think that all this money, chasing all these political candidates, is a nightmare, and they’re right," she said.