7:50Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh were present at President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 4, 2025. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan openly criticized her conservative colleagues for their decision to temporarily resolve nearly a dozen significant issues regarding President Donald Trump’s reform of the federal government without thorough hearings or discussions, often lacking detailed public rationale.
Kagan expressed her perspective, stating, "My own view is: be cautious," during a gathering of federal judges from the Ninth Circuit, regarding the recent surge of decisions made on the so-called emergency docket.
The matters at hand, which include funding freezes, layoffs of federal employees, and the dismissal of members from independent agencies, came before the court in the last six months as justices were requested to make swift judgments on lower court rulings, without comprehensive briefing or oral arguments, to shield a party from claimed imminent and irreparable damage.
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Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh were present at President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 4, 2025. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
In almost all instances, the court’s conservative majority has favored the Trump administration. Most recently, on Wednesday, it permitted the president to remove three members appointed by Democrats from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, with the court’s ruling providing just a brief three-sentence rationale.
"Courts are meant to provide explanations, to the litigants and to the public at large," Kagan remarked. "As we increasingly handle cases on the emergency docket, there is a significant obligation to clarify our reasoning more thoroughly."
While addressing her fellow justices with caution, she implied that aspects of "good decision making" were often absent in many recent emergency judgments.
"We have established standards for that," she noted. "I believe we should apply those standards diligently."
Kagan highlighted the court’s ruling from the previous week that allowed Trump to proceed with a substantial reorganization of the Department of Education, which included significant staff reductions. The court’s majority failed to elaborate on its ruling.
"An observer might conclude that we indicated the president has the power to dismantle [the agency]…. That [issue] wasn’t even presented before us," she remarked. "It places the court in a very challenging position."
Kagan also expressed concern over the increasing number of separate opinions among the bench — where several of her colleagues produce their own concurring opinions in significant cases instead of allowing the majority opinion to stand on its own.
She indicated that having too many writers — "just one or two individuals attempting to convey that they would have composed it differently" — in each case "dilutes" the court’s intended message.
"My perspective is that while the court comprises numerous members, it is an institution," she stated. "It is a court. It conveys its strongest message when it communicates as a unified court, rather than a setting where nine individuals convene and write separately."
Regarding the frequent situations where Kagan finds herself dissenting from the six-justice conservative majority, she conveyed, "I don’t take pleasure in that. It frustrates me. It disappoints me. At times, it drives me to distraction."
"How do I handle that?" she inquired. "I must turn the page… You may lose one day, but you continue to engage the following day."
Sourse: abcnews.go.com
