Just a few months ago, we wrote about what it means for state judges to live with the fear that someone angry about a case might show up at their front door with a gun. We pointed out that if you decide cases for a living, a safety risk shouldn’t be part of the job description. This isn't just a state‑court problem: Supreme Court justices themselves are now telling Congress that the threats “have come very close.”
A Budget Hearing That Was Really About Fear
In mid‑July, Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett made rare back‑to‑back appearances before House and Senate appropriations subcommittees to testify about the Supreme Court’s budget request for the upcoming fiscal year. Formally, they were there to walk lawmakers through a request of more than $228 million in salaries and expenses for the Court, including an increase of over $20 million from the prior year. Substantively, much of the conversation turned on a single theme: how dangerous it has become to sit on the nation’s highest court.
“For some of us,” Kagan told lawmakers, “those threats have come very close, and all of us live with the knowledge that they may again materialize.” The Justice said that recent increases in the Court’s budget have been “almost entirely” driven by security needs, particularly since the Supreme Court Police assumed responsibility for residential protection previously handled by the U.S. Marshals Service. She noted that the Court’s own police force anticipates a substantial rise in threats against the justices this year, and that the institution now lives with the knowledge that some of those threats have already come uncomfortably close to materializing. Her testimony underscored the idea that security is no longer an add‑on to the Court’s work; it is woven into its operating budget and into the daily lives of its members.
Barrett’s remarks drove that point home in human terms. She described being issued a bulletproof vest in the wake of the leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and having to explain to her then‑12‑year‑old son what the vest was and why she had to wear it. She recounted a recent swatting incident at her home, where police responded to a false report of gunshots and raised voices, and her teenage child opened the front door to see patrol cars lining the street. Barrett also detailed a pattern of “pizza doxxing” in which judges and justices receive anonymous pizza deliveries for a “Daniel Anderl.” Daniel was the son of federal district judge Esther Salas, and he was murdered by a disgruntled litigant in 2020. For Barrett, these episodes are not mere annoyances but deliberate attempts to intimidate and influence judicial decision‑making.
Members of Congress, for their part, seemed prepared to treat security for the Supreme Court as an urgent priority. Appropriators in both chambers stressed that judicial officers must be able to perform their duties without fearing for their own safety or that of their families. Yet the justices’ testimony also forced a broader reckoning: if it is “appalling” that threats have come so close for the nine members of the Supreme Court, what does that imply about the thousands of judges who lack anything resembling their protective infrastructure?
The Numbers Behind the Anxiety
The threat environment judges now face is measurable, not anecdotal. Federal data show hundreds of protective investigations and rising “total threats to judges” each year, with hundreds of distinct judges identified as targets.
On July 14, 2026, Justice Elena Kagan told Congress that Supreme Court Police are projecting a sharp increase in threats against the justices in 2026. There has been a recent uptick in prosecutions for threatening communications, including a number of cases involving judges. This supports the theory that what judges and court staff describe is part of a systemic pattern rather than a handful of isolated incidents. Even courts with access to robust protective infrastructure are seeing traditional safeguards strained.
Meanwhile, states have been racing to restrict access to judges’ personal information, criminalize certain forms of doxxing and intimidation, and harden courthouse security. Those efforts sit alongside federal threat investigations and prosecutions, forming a patchwork response to the same trend: deeply personal grievances, online harassment, and intimidation at home directed at people whose job is to decide contentious cases.
Security as a Line Item, Not an Afterthought
SCOTUS’s 2027 Salaries and Expenses report makes clear that security is no longer peripheral in its funding requests. The Court is seeking roughly $210 million overall, with about $207 million in discretionary funds, and a notable share of that growth is explicitly tied to security needs.
Instead of ad hoc add‑ons, security now appears as defined program increases. The Court details new funding to expand personal protection for the justices and bolster building security, establish an off‑site residential security office to coordinate and sustain protection at home, and add specialized cybersecurity positions as part of a broader modernization plan. These items signal an effort to treat physical and cyber threats as ongoing operational realities that require dedicated staff and infrastructure, not temporary fixes.
The documentation also reflects that the prior year’s appropriations already baked in tens of millions of dollars for security, both physical and cyber, exceeding the Court’s original request to accelerate a multi‑year security plan and the shift of residential protection from the Marshals Service to Supreme Court Police. Put together, this shows Congress is beginning to treat Supreme Court security as a continuing investment. It also gives concrete context to the stories Kagan and Barrett told: bulletproof vests, residential command posts, and cyber defenses are now funded components of a larger apparatus meant to keep the justices—and the Court as an institution—safe in a threat environment that is no longer hypothetical.
Will Congress Protect the Whole Bench?
The hard question sharpened by this week’s testimony is whether Congress will approach judicial security as a system‑wide problem or continue to address it in silos. Supreme Court justices now have an expanding protective infrastructure: armed residential details, a dedicated police force, enhanced building security, and planned facilities for screening visitors outside the Court’s main building. Federal judges benefit from the U.S. Marshals Service’s threat‑assessment and investigative capacity and from growing attention to prosecutions for threatening communications. Yet the nearly 30,000 state judges across the country still operate in a far more fragmented environment.
The Countering Threats and Attacks on Our Judges Act is one attempt to bridge that gap. The bill, which has already cleared the Senate by unanimous consent, would create a State Judicial Threat Intelligence and Resource Center within the State Justice Institute—essentially a national hub for security data, training, technical assistance, and standardized incident reporting focused on state and local courts. Its promise lies in helping judges, court staff, and local law enforcement recognize and respond to threats, assess security at courthouses and judges’ homes, and consolidate information on emerging risks across jurisdictions. Kagan and Barrett’s testimony only underscores how badly that kind of infrastructure is needed: judicial security is not just about high‑profile protests or isolated attacks, but about an ongoing, cross‑court challenge that touches every level of the system.
The stakes are more than personal. When judges have to factor the risk to their families into every contentious ruling, when doxxing campaigns and swatting incidents become routine tools of political and legal pressure, the independence of the judiciary itself is at risk. Courts cannot function as neutral arbiters if deciding controversial cases means accepting a baseline expectation of targeted harassment and violence. Security appropriations and privacy statutes may sound technical, but they are, in a very real sense, the infrastructure of the rule of law.
In that light, the Supreme Court’s plea for more security funding is both symptom and signal. It confirms that judges at every level are being asked to absorb more danger simply for doing their jobs. And it suggests that the real question is no longer whether we will spend money on judicial security, but whether we will do so in a way that protects the entire bench, not just the most visible members.
