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Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified before the House Appropriations Committee on July 14, asking Congress for a Supreme Court budget of nearly $230 million for fiscal 2027. It was the first time sitting justices had appeared before Congress since 2019. The roughly 10 percent increase, about $21 million, is driven largely by security. More than $14 million would fund what the court calls protective activities for justices' residences and families.
Barrett described the day she brought a bulletproof vest home, and her 12-year-old son asked what it was. "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 told the committee. She also recounted a swatting attack on her home about six weeks earlier, when local police responded to a fake emergency call. Her own security detail was present and helped keep officers from storming the house.
The concern reaches across the federal judiciary. The U.S. Marshals Service reported that nearly 400 judges faced threats last year, with 276 targeted this year as of July 1. Kagan pointed to the murder of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas's 20-year-old son by a gunman who came to the family home intending to kill her. Since then, many federal judges have received packages bearing the slain son's name. In 2022, a California resident, Sophie Roske, traveled to Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Maryland home carrying a handgun. Roske later pleaded guilty to attempted assassination and was sentenced in 2025 to eight years in prison.
The court began expanding its police force and home protection about a decade ago, after Justice Antonin Scalia died with no security detail nearby. Kagan noted the full request still amounts to less than one tenth of one percent of the federal budget. The fiscal 2027 plan would extend that protection further by adding officers assigned to the justices.
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