By John Kruzel and Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – In a rare appearance before Congress, U.S. Supreme Court justices sought more security funding on Tuesday and warned of a sharp rise in threats against them, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recounting being sent home with a bulletproof vest and targeted in a recent “swatting” hoax.
Barrett and Justice Elena Kagan urged lawmakers to approve a roughly 10% budget increase for the court, with Kagan saying the Supreme Court police force expects a 38% increase in threats this year following a 25% rise last year.
“For some of us, those threats have come very close,” Kagan told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee. Their appearance was the first before Congress by sitting justices since 2019, excluding Senate confirmation hearings for nominees.
A BULLETPROOF VEST AND ‘SWATTING’ INCIDENT
In personal terms, Barrett told lawmakers about some of the threats she and her family have encountered, emphasizing how they have affected her children.
She said that when threats intensified after the leak in 2022 of a draft of the court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to abortion nationwide, her security detail sent her home with a bulletproof vest, prompting her then 12-year-old son to ask 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.”
Barrett also recounted being the target of a “swatting” attack roughly six weeks ago, during which officers responded to a false report alleging gunshots and raised voices coming from her home.
In her first public comments on the matter, she said one of her teenage sons opened the door to leave the house and was confronted by a large police presence outside. The justice said she was grateful that Supreme Court police were stationed outside her residence because they were able to intercept responding local officers and explain that the emergency report was fraudulent.
Numerous federal judges have also received an unsolicited pizza delivered to their homes in the name of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’ son, who was fatally shot in 2020 by a disgruntled lawyer who went to her New Jersey home.
“Many of us, me included, have received threatening, anonymous deliveries designed to intimidate and harass us,” Barrett said.
“I think the message on these deliveries being sent in his name is clear,” Barrett added.
Two weeks ago the Supreme Court ended a nine-month term highlighted by legal disputes involving President Donald Trump and his administration. The court has backed major elements of Trump’s expansive use of executive authority.
The court’s 6-3 conservative majority has reshaped U.S. law with landmark rulings on abortion, presidential power and other contentious issues, while facing sustained ethics scrutiny and a decline in public approval.
‘IT’S GOT TO STOP’
According to data from the U.S. Marshals Service, nearly 400 judges faced threats last year and 276 have been targeted this year as of July 1.
Barrett, one of Trump’s three conservative appointees, and Kagan, one of three liberal justices, defended the court’s nearly $230 million request for the next fiscal year, a roughly 10% increase from this year.
In March, Chief Justice John Roberts said hostility directed in personal terms at judges is “dangerous and it’s got to stop,” commenting just days after Trump issued a social media broadside against judges who ruled against him and his administration.
Roberts’ remarks followed his 2024 end-of-year report highlighting “a significant uptick in identified threats at all levels of the judiciary” over recent years.
In one of the most high-profile incidents, a California resident appeared near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home in 2022 armed with a handgun. Sophie Roske pleaded guilty to attempted assassination and was sentenced last year to eight years in federal prison.
KAGAN FAVORS PANEL ON ETHICS, BARRETT ‘LESS CERTAIN’
Amid ethics scrutiny, the Supreme Court in 2023 adopted its first code of conduct, though critics said it lacked meaningful enforcement because it left recusal decisions to the justices themselves and created no enforcement mechanism.
Kagan reiterated on Tuesday her support for creating a judicial panel to enforce the justices’ compliance with the court’s ethics code, saying such a mechanism would help ensure public confidence in the court. The justices are taking the code seriously and “making every effort – and I think successful efforts – to live by it,” she added.
Barrett said she was “less certain” about the need to create a means to enforce the ethics code, citing various complexities such as who would select the members of the enforcement panel.
Questions have persisted over the conduct of some justices, including Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas.
Alito told the New York Times that an upside-down U.S. flag displayed outside one of his homes after the 2020 election was placed there by his wife during a dispute with a neighbor over a sign on the neighbor’s lawn critical of then-President Trump.
The inverted flag became a symbol of protest by Trump supporters as he sought to overturn his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden with false claims of widespread voting fraud.
Thomas has defended his not disclosing luxury trips paid for by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, saying he believed they qualified as exempt “personal hospitality,” and has described the omission of a real estate transaction involving Crow from disclosure forms as inadvertent.
(Reporting by John Kruzel and Andrew Chung; Editing by Amy Stevens and Howard Goller)
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