Supreme Court Justice Barrett says ‘the threat level is really high’

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told a House subcommittee on Tuesday that “the threat level” against her and other federal judges “is really high” as she testified about the high court’s 2027 budget request.

“Those statistics sound abstract, but being on the receiving end of them is not,” Barrett told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.

The Supreme Court is asking Congress to appropriate $228.4 million for fiscal 2027, a nearly 10% increase since the $207.8 million appropriated for 2026. The increase reflects higher spending on security-related measures.

“I thought I would just share a little bit about how the threats have affected me and my family personally,” said Barrett, who was testifying with Justice Elena Kagan. “They have required me to my children to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about.”

She told the panel that in the spring of 2022, “My security detail sent me home with a bulletproof vest” when threats to her life escalated after the leak to a media outlet of a draft Supreme Court opinion that more than a month later reversed a 1973 decision that had said there was a constitutional right to abortion.

“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,” Barrett said.

“I didn’t know how to respond because maybe I lack imagination, but 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, who was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump in his first term, also discussed having recently been the target of a “swatting” attack.

“My teenage son, one of my teenage sons, opened the door to go out with friends and saw in our street, it was full of police cars, who had responded to a false report of gunshots and raised voices in my home,” Barrett said.

“I was very, very grateful that I had Supreme Court Police outside my home because they were able to stop and meet with and explain to the county police that it had been a false alarm, and so the police did not actually attempt to enter our home.”

She also said that “any of us, me included, have received threatening anonymous deliveries designed to intimidate and harass us.”

Barrett and Kagan are the first Supreme Court justices to testify to Congress since 2019. That year, Kagan, and Justice Samuel Alito testified to the same subcommittee about the court’s budget request.

The two justices are scheduled to testify on Tuesday afternoon to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.

According to data from the U.S. Marshals Service, since the beginning of 2026, there have been a total of 512 investigations of threats to federal judges. That compares to 807 investigations of threats for all of 2025.