Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, on Tuesday, advocated for increased security funding, highlighting the alarming surge in violent threats against federal judges.
The appeal coincides with predictions from the US Marshals that threats against the federal judiciary will rise by 38 percent by 2026. This follows a significant 25 percent increase from the prior year, underscoring a troubling trend.
“Those statistics might seem abstract,” Barrett remarked to lawmakers during a House session. “But experiencing them firsthand is a different reality altogether.”
Barrett recounted a personal experience when her security team provided her with a bulletproof vest, which she took home at a time when threats against her were notably severe.
“My security details sent me home with a bulletproof vest,” Barrett shared. “I carried it into my house, placed it in my bedroom, set it down on the table, and when I turned around, my 12-year-old son was standing there in the middle of my bedroom,” she added, vividly illustrating the impact of these threats.
‘He wanted to know what it was and why I had it,’ Barrett, the only sitting justice with school-aged children, said of the exchange with her son. ‘I didn’t know how to respond.’
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett testifies during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, where she requested additional security funding
Barrett appeared with Elena Kagan, marking the first time in seven years that justices appeared on Capitol Hill
President Donald Trump and Barrett after her confirmation hearing in 2020
Barrett with her husband Jesse Barrett and their seven children
The Supreme Court justices are far from the only individuals who have pressed for heightened security for federal judges in recent years.
These threats, the justices stressed, have impacted them on a personal level. Barrett was the victim of an attempted incident six weeks earlier, as she noted Tuesday, and her sister, who lives in South Carolina, was the target of a separate threat last year.
‘They have required me [and] my children to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about,’ Barrett said.
‘For some of us, those threats have come very close, and all of us live with the knowledge that they may again materialize,’ Kagan said at the outset of the hearing. ‘But as the chief justice has said, all members of the court continue to do their jobs as they do legally right, adjudicating cases without fear or favor.’
The Supreme Court justices are far from the only individuals who have pressed for heightened security for federal judges in recent years.
There has been a rise in online harassment, threats of physical violence, and ‘doxxing’ judges at their home addresses, both via swatting— or the malicious act of calling in a false threat to SWAT teams or other tactical law enforcement, causing them to show up to a victim’s house without warning — and by sending them unsolicited pizzas at their home addresses.
Justices noted that the pizza deliveries are sometimes made in the name of a judge’s son who was shot and killed in 2020 after he opened the door to a disgruntled individual disguised as a delivery person.
These threats, the justices stressed, have impacted them on a personal level.
‘They have required me [and] my children to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about.
Their remarks come as Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has continued to speak out about the rise in threats against the high court – most recently in March, during a rare public speech to students at Rice University.
‘Personally directed hostility is dangerous,’ Roberts told the audience, ‘and it’s got to stop.’
Roberts’s remarks were seen at the time as a not-so-subtle nod to President Donald Trump, who blasted a federal judge on social media hours earlier as ‘wacky, nasty, crooked’ and ‘totally out of control’ for ruling against the administration. c