Supreme Court justices, in rare congressional appearance, seek major boost in security funds
Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett made a rare appearance before Congress on Tuesday to appeal for a significant boost in the court’s security funding, as Kagan told lawmakers that threats against the justices were expected to increase by more than a third this year.
The hearing—marking the first time since 2019 that justices testified on Capitol Hill—focused mainly on the court’s request for a $16.6 million budget increase to bolster security for the justices at work and at home. But the discussion also touched on the high court’s ethics rules and the growing number of decisions from its emergency docket, which are sometimes criticized as being less transparent than the court’s other decisions.
But judicial security was top of mind at a moment when judges regularly face personal attacks from politicians, media figures and others who dislike their decisions.
“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 her opening remarks, adding that the Supreme Court Police expects a 38 percent increase in threats this year, following a 25 percent increase last year.
Barrett said the threats are “constant,” forcing her and her children “to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about.”
She described being caught off guard a few years ago when having to explain to her son what a bulletproof vest was, as threats to her life were “particularly intense” around the time that a draft of the court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections was leaked to the press.
“My security detail sent me home with a bulletproof vest and I carried it into my house, put it into my bedroom, dropped it down on a table, turned around, and my 12-year-old son was standing in the doorway of my bedroom - and he wanted to know what it was and why I had it, and I didn’t know how to respond,” Barrett recalled.
More recently, in May, Barrett’s home was targeted in an apparent “swatting” hoax, with a caller reporting gunshots to prompt a police response, according to news reports.
In October, a Californian was sentenced to eight years in prison for attempting to assassinate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh at his home.
“Many of us, me included, have received threatening anonymous deliveries designed to intimidate and harass us,” Barrett said, adding that a security detail is necessary for daily activities.
In March, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. condemned personal criticism aimed at judges. The comments came after Trump ramped up his critiques of the justices when they struck down many of his tariffs. “Personally directed hostility is dangerous and has got to stop,” Roberts said during a talk at Rice University in Houston.
In the face of the added threats, the court has requested a $20.6 million budget increase for fiscal 2027, including a $14.6 million increase to give each justice an additional six security agents, as well as 25 extra officers at the Supreme Court building. The court is also asking for $2 million for a “residential security office” to coordinate security at the justices’ homes.
Kagan, a liberal, and Barrett, a conservative, appeared before the House Appropriations subcommittee that approves funding for the court. Later in the day, they appeared before a similar committee in the Senate to discuss the same issues.
The joint appearance also came as the court’s conservative and liberal factions increasingly aim hard-hitting language at each other, in their opinions and sometimes beyond. Kagan and Barrett are among the court’s more measured members, and they largely supported each other’s points during Tuesday hearing.
Although the hearing was slated to focus on budget matters, House members had latitude to fire off questions on controversial topics, including the court’s rulings. The high court’s recently concluded term included several hotly debated decisions, including one upholding birthright citizenship and another giving the president greater power over federal agencies.
Some lawmakers pressed the justices on the court’s increasingly common use of its emergency docket, sometimes pejoratively called the “shadow docket” for the relatively less-transparent way the justices decide the cases. For emergency docket rulings, the Supreme Court typically does not hold oral arguments, the justices’ vote counts are not always clear and they typically provide thinner reasoning for their decision. Debate between the justices over its use has sometimes spilled out in public.
The Trump administration has used the emergency docket to ask the justices to lift lower-court injunctions on Trump policies, and the court’s conservatives have largely granted those requests over dissents from the liberal justices. That has allowed the administration to move forward with policies, such as withholding foreign aid and revamping the federal bureaucracy, while the merits of those cases are still being litigated in lower courts.
“There are concerns obviously that these shadow dispositions impact adversely on the knowledge the public has about how the [court] makes its decisions and who is making what decisions,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland).
Kagan said the court has done a “better job” of explaining itself in the emergency rulings over the past year, but she noted that the uptick in requests for emergency relief is forcing the court to evolve how it handles the cases.
“Over time, we have at least tried to do better in important cases, ensuring that we have some degree of sort of regular-ish process,” Kagan said, noting that the court held oral arguments before blocking Trump from firing Lisa Cook, a Democratic appointee to the Federal Reserve Board.
During the Senate hearing, Kagan said it was a “fair criticism” to ask why the Supreme Court was seeing more action on the emergency docket. She agreed that the court, by granting more emergency requests, had probably incentivized its use.
“We’ve granted a number of these, and so people know that it’s available relief on the emergency docket,” Kagan said. “And when people know that relief is available, there are a lot of smart lawyers out there in the world who are going to say, ‘Why don’t we take a shot at that?’”
Justices’ visits to Capitol Hill are increasingly rare. Before this week’s testimony, there had been only three appearances by a sitting justice before Congress since 2011, according to a 2023 report by the Congressional Research Service. Before that, there was at least one appearance by a justice for 52 consecutive years.
In 2019, Kagan and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., appeared side by side before the same subcommittee that held Tuesday’s hearing, facing questions on matters including a possible Supreme Court ethics code and whether the court’s sessions should be televised.
Questions about ethics also came up during the hearing Tuesday, as several lawmakers noted that Supreme Court justices are not bound by an enforceable code.
Kagan said she supports the adoption of a code that would be enforced by an independent body of judges. She and her colleagues take the court’s nonbinding ethics guidelines seriously, she said, but if nothing else, a stricter ethics code would fuel “public confidence.”
Barrett said she was “less certain” of the merits of such an idea.
“The judiciary moves slowly, the court moves slowly,” she said. “And I think that if we had an enforceable body to enforce the code it would have to come from within the judiciary. … Who selects the judges? How is the panel comprised? There are just a lot of complexities.”
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