Kagan Tells Catholic University Law Audience the Court Has "Blinded Itself" to the Effects of Its Election Rulings, Citing Campaign-Finance Money as "a Nightmare"

On Tuesday, October 20, 2026, Justice Elena Kagan spoke to students at Catholic University’s law school in Washington. Reuters ran it under the headline that Court rulings have been destructive to democracy. The primary form is a spoken event; no official transcript was located, so the words below come from press accounts, which differ slightly in wording from one another.

The phrase appears in this passage, as the Guardian reports it: “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.”

On the Court’s rulings generally, Reuters quotes her: “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.”

On the June campaign-finance decision (2026-06-30–scotus-nrsc-v-fec-strikes-party-coordinated-expenditure-limits-6-3), Reuters quotes her: “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.”