WASHINGTON — Justice Elena Kagan does not buy the idea that the Supreme Court is in President Donald Trump’s pocket. She called it a “bum rap” on Tuesday, and rattled off rulings in which the court went the other way.
Kagan spoke at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, in a conversation with Professor J. Joel Alicea. She was asked about comments she made this summer, when she argued that decisions against the administration show the court is no rubber stamp for a president who appointed three of its justices.
“I do think it’s a bum rap,” she said, according to USA Today.
The court ruled against Trump’s signature tariffs. It also rejected his attempt to redefine birthright citizenship, his bid to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and his plan to deploy the National Guard as part of the immigration crackdown.
“These were things that President Trump cared deeply about,” she said.
She pointed to Trump’s own words as evidence, too. He has sometimes had “not very nice” things to say about its decisions and about some of her colleagues, she said, and that is because the court has pushed back.
That defense came with a sharp warning about the court’s own work on elections. Kagan accused the conservative majority of undermining democracy in rulings on redistricting, campaign finance and the Voting Rights Act, Bloomberg Law reported.
“In all these areas, the court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effect of their rulings”
She singled out the 2019 ruling that barred federal judges from throwing out congressional maps for being too partisan. Both parties, she said, have since raced to redraw districts for maximum gain.
“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 right to voting equality, driving people away from the center towards the wings, towards the extremes,” Kagan said. She called it “very destructive of our democracy.”
Campaign finance drew the same kind of language. The court’s rulings striking down limits on election spending have, in her telling, opened the door to corruption.
“The people of America look around this political system and think that all this money chasing all these political candidates is a nightmare,” she said. “And they’re right.”
Voting rights got a similar treatment. The April 29 ruling narrowed when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 can be used to justify a majority-Black or majority-Hispanic district, and Kagan said the effect on racial equality at the ballot box was immediate.
“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.
Kagan, an Obama appointee and one of the court’s three liberal justices, also said a more balanced court had served the country better, because no one could be sure it would push through anybody’s program.
All of this comes with an election two weeks off. Voters go to the polls Nov. 3 in the midterms, after a year in which state after state has redrawn its House map — a scramble Texas set off at Trump’s urging. Some Democrats, fed up with a 6-3 conservative majority, want to add justices or set term limits for them. Those ideas face long odds in Congress, even if Democrats win it back.
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