Supreme Court justices detailed growing and disturbing threats to their safety as they asked Congress on Tuesday to boost their security budgets.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett described having to explain to her 12-year-old son why she was bringing home a bulletproof vest.
She also revealed she has been targeted in a perverse threat in which perpetrators arrange unwanted food deliveries to the judges’ homes in the name of Daniel Anderl, the murdered son of a federal judge, slain by a disgruntled lawyer in an attack on the judge’s home.
Justice Barrett said the threats are meant to punish judges for previous rulings or, in some cases, to try to intimidate them in future cases.
“It’s hard to see how some of them are not designed to do precisely that,” she said.
The latest incident came Monday, when a man was arrested at a street barrier when police discovered he was armed. The man was asking for directions to the Supreme Court.
Justice Barrett and Justice Elena Kagan were making a rare appearance before Congress to defend the high court’s budget request for fiscal 2027.
While security concerns dominated their remarks, they also peeled back the curtain on some of the inner workings of the high court and disputes about its operations.
That included how to impose a code of conduct on the justices. They have a code, but enforcement is left to each justice.
“We continue to talk about the issue amongst ourselves,” Justice Kagan said, though she said they haven’t been able to reach a consensus.
She did say that the court has made progress on how to manage the growing use of the “shadow,” or interim docket, which is when cases come to the justices in a preliminary posture and don’t usually get full briefing or oral argument.
Major policy decisions are made — albeit temporarily — in interim docket rulings, but the justices had been reticent to release full opinions.
That’s now changing, with the court trying to say more about some of the heftier emergency docket rulings, Justice Kagan said.
But she said they are still struggling with whether those interim rulings are binding on lower courts. In some rulings, justices have said decisions are binding, but other times have suggested more leeway.
“The court itself has been of a little bit mixed mind,” Justice Kagan said.
Congress is working on the 2027 spending bills. The Supreme Court is a tiny part of that, constituting just 2% of spending on the federal judiciary and a tenth of a percent of all U.S. government spending.
For 2027, the justices want a $14 million increase in operations — 7% more than 2026 — with most of that going to extra police, space to house them, and 12 cybersecurity experts to combat growing attempts to penetrate the court’s systems.
The court saw roughly 200 million cyber intrusion attempts last year and expects that figure to nearly double this year. Some of those are from foreign actors, the justices said.
In terms of security threats, the court saw a 25% increase last year and expects a 38% increase this year.
“For some of us, those threats have come very close, and all of us live with the knowledge that they may again materialize,” Justice Kagan said.
Justice Barrett sought to drive home the personal nature of the threats.
Earlier this spring, she faced a “swatting” incident in which someone called in a report of a disturbance at her home. Local authorities responded.
She said that, luckily, her Supreme Court police detail intercepted the county officers and defused the situation.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed support for the idea of more money.
“It is increasingly dangerous to be a Supreme Court justice these days,” Sen. Susan Collins said.
The Maine Republican said members of Congress themselves have sparked some of the threats.
“It’s appalling to me that some of the rhetoric is coming from public officials on both sides of the aisle, who should know better than to levy personal and political attacks against the judiciary,” she said.
She pointed back to a comment by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer in 2020 warning the justices would “pay the price” if they attempted to eat away at the Roe v. Wade decision that established a national right to abortion.
Democratic senators, meanwhile, pointed to comments by President Trump and his team harshly criticizing the justices’ rulings in recent months.
Tuesday’s hearing was remarkably respectful on both sides of the dais, with lawmakers and court members careful not to cross lines in person.
Justice Kagan said criticism of the court “is fair game.”
“But intimidation is a different thing entirely,” she said.
Justice Kagan said it was Congress a decade ago that first prompted the court to improve security after several key members learned that only the chief justice had a permanent detail.
Lawmakers also made a pitch to the justices on Tuesday to come back to Capitol Hill more often.
The last time justices testified on their budget was in 2019, in the House. Senators said the last appearance before their spending committee was in 2011.
In the years since, the court’s security needs have exploded.
That was put in stark relief in 2022, after the leak of a draft opinion in the Dobbs case, which would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion to the states.
Threats to the court surged, and one person now sits in prison after plotting to assassinate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, showing up at his suburban Maryland home in the early hours of the morning with tools to break in and weapons to kill.
Justice Kagan said one vulnerability for the court is that the first security screening for visitors comes when they are already in the building.
She said they are exploring ways to push that perimeter outside the building, including by creating a security entrance that would screen people beforehand.
Congress adopted that approach for the Capitol earlier this century.
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