A teenage boy opened his front door to find police cars swarming his family’s home, responding to a fake report of gunfire.
That boy is the son of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and the incident is now part of the public record after she and Justice Elena Kagan made an unusual trip to Capitol Hill this week.
The two justices sat before a House committee, marking the first time since 2019 that sitting members of the Supreme Court have testified before Congress in this capacity.
Their appearance centered on a request for the court’s next fiscal year budget, which begins October 1 and totals more than $228 million, a jump of over $20 million from current funding levels.
Roughly $14.6 million of that increase is tied directly to justice protection, funding that would add six new security agents per justice and cover costs tied to travel outside the Washington, DC, region.
Barrett used part of her testimony to describe a moment that reshaped her family’s daily life. After the leak of the court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, she was issued a bulletproof vest, an object she never anticipated having to explain to her own children.
“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 told the committee.
She went further, describing a swatting incident roughly six weeks earlier in which someone falsely reported gunfire and “raised voices” at her residence, prompting a police response her teenage son encountered firsthand at the front door.
Kagan’s testimony painted a similarly stark picture of life on the bench under threat. She told lawmakers that danger has, at times, reached an alarming proximity to individual justices.
“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.
Despite the danger, Kagan emphasized that the justices remain focused on their constitutional duties. “But, as the chief justice has said, all members of the court continue to do their jobs as they believe legally right, adjudicating cases without fear or favor,” she said.
Kagan cited internal projections from the Supreme Court Police forecasting a 38 percent surge in threats against justices in 2026 alone.
The threat landscape extends well beyond the nine justices. Data from the U.S. Marshals Service shows a 57 percent spike in incidents the agency classifies as “security incidents of significant concern” during fiscal year 2025.
As of July 1 of this year, 370 threats against federal judges had already been logged, triggering 512 separate investigations by the Marshals Service.
That pace stands in sharp contrast to the prior fiscal year, when officials tallied 564 total threats against judges over the full twelve months, suggesting this year’s numbers could climb even higher before the count is finished, according to CBS.
Lawmakers on the committee heard the testimony as part of the standard budget review process, but the personal accounts from Barrett and Kagan added a rare human dimension to what is typically a routine funding hearing.
The court’s full budget request, including the security funding increase, now heads into the broader congressional appropriations process, where lawmakers will ultimately decide its fate.
Judicial officials outside the Supreme Court have echoed similar concerns in recent months, warning that escalating threats risk interfering with judges’ ability to rule independently and without intimidation.
Congress is expected to weigh the request against competing budget priorities in the coming weeks as the federal government moves toward the start of the new fiscal year on October 1.
For now, the testimony from Barrett and Kagan stands as one of the most candid public accounts from sitting justices about the personal toll of serving on the nation’s highest court amid a rising tide of threats.
