Kagan, appointed by Barack Obama, argued that the court has turned away from the damage its decisions do. "The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works," she said.

Remarks at Catholic University

The discussion at Catholic University's law school in Washington DC took place on Tuesday, according to multiple reports. Kagan, one of the court's three liberal justices on a bench with a 6-3 conservative majority, directed her criticism at decisions on redistricting and campaign finance, saying they had undermined America's democracy.

Redistricting and gerrymandering rulings

Earlier this year the supreme court struck down Louisiana's congressional map, effectively gutting a major section of the Voting Rights Act. Kagan also criticized the court's 2019 decision holding that federal courts should not police partisan gerrymandering.

She said both political parties have been engaged in a race to the bottom on partisan gerrymanders, depriving masses of citizens of voting equality. In her view, the effects reach beyond the maps themselves:

• •Candidates are pushed away from the center, toward the wings and the extremes, because the only thing anybody has to worry about any more is being primaried.
• •Gerrymandering is making an already too polarized country even more so.
• •Large states with substantial numbers of Republican and Democratic voters are being pushed all red or all blue, which she called very destructive to democracy.

Campaign finance and money in politics

In June, the court struck down campaign finance restrictions limiting how much political parties may spend on candidates. Both that ruling and the Louisiana map decision were split 6-3 along ideological lines.

Kagan took aim at the court's campaign finance rulings and at the growing role of money in politics. "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, adding that they are right.

A democracy that does not work

Kagan described voting rights as foundational, saying that a well-functioning, healthy political system can be counted on to deliver a wide range of outcomes. In her view, the court has instead created a democracy that does not work as well as it should.

Her remarks came just two weeks before the midterm elections, amid ongoing battles over congressional redistricting.