Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said on Thursday that the court’s 6-3 conservative majority remains "quite the opposite" of a rubber stamp for President Donald Trump, despite repeatedly siding with his administration on immigration and executive power.
Kagan Rejects Trump Rubber Stamp Label
"I don’t see this as a court that is just like, ‘We’re just going to rubber stamp what the current administration does.’ You know, quite the opposite," Kagan told a 9th U.S. Circuit judicial conference in Bellevue, Washington, according to a report by Politico. "I think that that is a bad rap."
The court has backed Trump in most cases reaching it during his second term.
Major Trump Defeats Demonstrate Court Independence
Kagan pointed to two of Trump’s biggest defeats. In February, the court struck down his sweeping emergency tariffs in a 6-3 ruling, forcing the administration to replace them with a temporary 10% global duty under another law. Trump later lashed out at the justices.
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"Tariffs are probably the key policy issue for this president," Kagan said, calling the decision an unusually consequential rejection of a sitting president’s signature policy.
The court also rejected Trump’s bid to restrict birthright citizenship in June. Chief Justice John Roberts joined Kagan and four other justices in ruling that the order violated the 14th Amendment. Reuters reported the policy could have affected as many as 250,000 births annually.
Conservative Record Still Draws Kagan’s Criticism
Still, Kagan acknowledged that the court "is very conservative" and follows parts of the conservative legal movement’s playbook that she considers "deeply wrong." The majority has expanded Trump’s authority to remove independent agency officials, backed key immigration restrictions and weakened the Voting Rights Act.
"But is this court the kind of puppet for the current administration? I think definitely not," Kagan said.
She also recalled Trump’s historic attendance at the birthright-citizenship arguments. "He was just like a person who came in and sat down and then had to listen to an argument," Kagan said.
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