The Supreme Court is asking for millions of dollars from Congress to draft plans for a new facility to screen visitors outside the court’s home on Capitol Hill, as security threats against the justices mount.
The $6.5 million proposal is preliminary but could result in visitors at the court being moved out of the building for screening, a setup similar to that adopted at the Capitol with the opening of a visitor’s center in 2008.
Budget documents show the justices asked for money to design a new facility as part of an overall $228 million request for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, an increase of about $20 million.
Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett are scheduled to make a rare appearance at the Capitol on Tuesday to defend the court’s budget before House and Senate subcommittees, the first time justices will have testified before Congress since 2019.
Threats against the justices, their families and other federal judges have risen dramatically in recent years, data from the U.S. Marshals show.
After a draft of the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked in 2022, an armed man tried to assassinate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh at his home.
In May, police said they determined that Justice Barrett’s Northern Virginia home had been the target of a “swatting” attack, in which a false tip reporting gunshots was called in to prompt a law enforcement response. Last year, police officers in South Carolina were dispatched to the home of one of Justice Barrett’s sisters because of a threat that there was a pipe bomb in her mailbox, which proved to be a hoax.
The court’s budget proposal also requests an increase of $14.6 million to continue the expansion of the court’s in-house police force and for security when the justices travel outside the Washington area.
And the justices have asked for additional funding for a regional command post to be located outside the court complex for the officers responsible for securing the justices’ homes. The post is intended to “improve reaction time in case of an emergency,” according to budget documents. They’ve also requested $2.3 million to hire engineers and developers to protect the work of the justices from “quickly evolving cyberthreats.”
Congress has largely deferred to the justices on issues of security, and lawmakers have approved additional funding for them on a bipartisan basis. Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass a new spending bill for the next fiscal year.
“I want to give them all of the security they need,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said this spring of the justices.
But, she added, “the court has to come up here, tell us what you’re doing. We have no idea what you spend the money on.”
That kind of request has resulted in Tuesday’s visit by the justices, who are scheduled to testify before a House subcommittee in the morning and in front of senators in the afternoon.
The Supreme Court’s budget request includes two parts — money for salaries and general operations and, separately, expenditures to maintain the court’s building and grounds, which includes the request for funds for a new courthouse visitor’s entrance.
Justices Kagan and Barrett are scheduled to discuss only the first part, though they could be asked about either.
And lawmakers’ questions on Tuesday could range beyond the budget. The justices could be asked about some of their more contested recent rulings, their decisions to take part in or recuse from key cases and more.
The Supreme Court’s decisions in recent years — especially the overturning of Roe and the grant of immunity to President Trump from prosecution for official acts — have led some Democrats to call for an overhaul of the court. Lawmakers and candidates have proposed term limits for the life-tenured justices and to add justices to the bench to restore “balance” on the nine-member court that now has six justices nominated by Republicans.
The testimony from Justice Kagan, a liberal, and Justice Barrett, a conservative, will come two weeks after the Supreme Court wrapped up a momentous term with rulings that frustrated both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The court blocked Mr. Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented immigrants, but significantly weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act, clearing the way for Republicans throughout the South to redraw congressional maps.
Until recently, it was common for sitting Supreme Court justices to appear each year before Congress. Justices testified at least once every year from 1960 through 2011, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.
More recently, the relationship between the Supreme Court and Congress has been occasionally fraught, particularly when the Democrats controlled the Senate and were pressuring the court to adopt a code of ethics specific to the nine justices.
Justices last appeared before Congress in 2019, when Justices Kagan and Samuel A. Alito Jr. were politely quizzed about their views on the possibility of televising the Supreme Court’s oral arguments and whether the justices would draft an ethics code.
But after revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas had failed to report gifts and luxury travel paid for by a Texas billionaire in 2023, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declined a request to appear before Congress.
Such appearances, the chief justice wrote at the time, are “exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.” The invitation came from Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who then led the Senate Judiciary Committee. Later that year, the justices issued a broad code of conduct that was praised as a first step but also criticized for lacking an enforcement mechanism.
At Tuesday’s hearings, Justices Kagan and Barrett will likely strive to focus only on their budget request and court security, potentially touching on how the increase in threats has changed the daily lives of Supreme Court justices in the last decade.
Before the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who was hunting in Texas without official security when he died in 2016, most of the justices drove themselves to and from work and were frequently spotted without a security detail while performing ordinary errands like grocery shopping.
But since protests erupted outside the justices’ homes after the leak of the abortion decision, they now have round-the-clock security, including at their homes, and are accompanied at all times by members of the court’s police force.
Justice Clarence Thomas spoke about the changes at a judicial conference in Florida in May.
“Because of security concerns, we’re not able to move around as much as I used to,” the justice said, describing how he no longer takes law clerks on an annual trip to Gettysburg, Pa., and spends more time at home making pulled pork.
In recent years, the court transitioned from relying on U.S. Marshals to protect the justices’ homes to assigning that role to the U.S. Supreme Court Police. The court has dramatically expanded the size of its in-house police force because of “evolving risks that require continuous protection,” according to another recent budget proposal.
A recruiting video says the police force includes “more than 200 sworn officers and growing” and advertises the role as: “The highest court. A higher calling.”
Data from the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees security for the entire federal judiciary, showed there were more than 600 threats against judges in fiscal 2023, the year after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion. The U.S. Marshals reported a 57 percent increase in significant security incidents for judges in fiscal 2025 and the number was on track to rise again in fiscal 2026, according to the judiciary’s budget proposal.
Abbie VanSickle, Catie Edmondson and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
