Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified Tuesday about some of the rising security threats that the court, their families, and fellow federal judges have faced in recent years, while urging Congress for a roughly 10% annual budget increase that would bolster security.
“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 in a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing while making the case for a roughly $14 million increase from the year prior.
Their appearance was the first time since 2019 that sitting justices have gone before Congress.
“The threats are constant, and they’re always there. And so it’s necessary now in daily activities,” Barrett said of the need for enhanced security, including the request to expand each justice’s security personnel, with six more agents for each.
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The court’s expenses have risen an average of 15% annually over the last five fiscal years, and the court’s security team anticipates a 38% increase in threats this year, said Kagan.
In making their case for additional funding, Barrett shared some of the personal threats that have been made against her, including a swatting incident at her home roughly six weeks ago that directly affected one of her teenage sons.
She was also sent home by her security team with a bulletproof vest around the time of the 2022 leak of a draft majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade, she said.
“I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one,” she said, noting it had led to questions from her 12-year-old son.
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As far as other federal judges, many have continued to receive threatening anonymous pizza deliveries to their homes. These deliveries use the name of the late son of New Jersey Judge Esther Salas, who was fatally shot in 2020, Barrett said.
Later on Tuesday, Kagan and Barrett appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, where they again made their budget request. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) expressed disdain toward public officials who have helped fuel threats toward the court.
Collins castigated those “on both sides of the aisle” while Reed pointedly singled out President Donald Trump, who has called the high court “a weaponized and unjust Political Organization” after it ruled against him in the spring.
“If there’s anyone in the country who demands more attention, it’s the president, and I think that behavior is very dangerous to the court and to the whole system,” Reed said.
Kagan agreed that such statements are “dangerous” and “not appropriate.”
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“Criticism is fair game,” she said, “but intimidation is a different thing entirely.”
“When political figures of any stripe are trying to intimidate judges and justices to do things that they like, rather than the things that they don’t, that’s where we really have crossed the line,” Kagan added.
In addition to increasing security personnel for the justices, the court’s nearly $230 million budget request would enhance cybersecurity efforts amid a rise in online threats and data leaks, which have left all nine justices guarded in their work, Kagan said during the House hearing earlier in the day.
“Because we can’t do our business, we can’t engage in confidential communications, which is the best way to operate ― is to be fully open with one’s colleagues about one’s views,” she said of the leaks. “If you think that those views are going to appear on the front page of a newspaper, you pull back. You don’t have the kinds of conversations that I think the court really depends on to do great work.”
“I’m frankly amazed that we’ve done as well as we have up until now, if you think about the number of people who want to know what we say, before we say it.”
– Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan on cyber attacks
To help combat these growing online threats, Barrett stressed the need to hire 12 new cybersecurity experts to help respond to what she called “north of” 200 million attempts to breach the court’s system.
“It can compromise all kinds of confidential information, confidential witnesses; it can endanger national security, so we take that very seriously,” she said.
“I’m frankly amazed that we’ve done as well as we have up until now, if you think about the number of people who want to know what we say, before we say it,” added Kagan. “The number of people whose millions and billions of dollars depend on it. Other nations might want to receive information before we publicly announce it.”
As for the 2022 Dobbs leak, the investigation remains open with its source not known, the justices said.