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Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan warned a group of law students at Catholic University on Tuesday that the current iteration of the court — which has a 6-3 majority of far right conservatives — is upending American democracy.

Kagan focused much of her remarks on addressing gerrymandering over the past year by both political parties. The map-changing began when Republicans started redrawing districts in order to get an upper hand over Democrats in the midterms. Democrats responded in kind, redrawing maps in states where they were more likely to see gains to counter the Republicans’ efforts.

(Democrats have also submitted legislation to prevent these “gerrymander wars” in the future by requiring nonpartisan boards to redraw maps going forward, a proposal that Republicans have rejected.)

“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,” Kagan lamented in her lecture to the law students.

Such gerrymandering pushes political parties “toward the extremes, because the only thing anybody has to worry about anymore is being primaried,” Kagan said.

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It is making what I think is unfortunately a too polarized country even more so. 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.

It is making what I think is unfortunately a too polarized country even more so. In this election, and the next election, we are seeing........

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