It may be true that marriage rates have gone down in the past few decades, but it’s still rare to see a high-ranking public official who has never been married. But this does describe Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who is the only sitting justice who has remained single and childless for her entire life.
In a frustrating, if predictable, turn of events, her marital status once sparked rumors about her sexual orientation. Friends of Kagan’s confirmed to Politico back in 2010 that Kagan is not, in fact, a lesbian; she just never found a man she wanted to get married to. “She dated men when we were in law school, we talked about men — who in our class was cute, who she would like to date, all of those things. She definitely dated when she was in D.C. after law school, when she was in Chicago – and she just didn’t find the right person,” Kagan’s law school buddy and longtime bestie Sarah Walzer told the outlet.
The bigger question is why were people so pressed about her marital status to begin with? As Yale law student Laura Safdie told The New York Times, “I hope we get to the point where whether someone is married or not has no bearing on what type of justice they are going to be.”