U.S. Supreme Court Justices Request Increased Funding to Enhance Their Executive Protection Teams
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified in rare appearances this week before the U.S. Congress to request a substantial increase in security funding to enhance personal security for members of the Court.
The justices are asking for $210.3 million in fiscal year 2027 funding, up from $196.4 million for fiscal year 2026. Part of the 2027 funding—$28 million—would be combined with $30 million in other funding from the U.S. House of Representatives to provide $40 million to protect the justices from physical threats and $18 million to protect their work from cyber threats.
“The threats are constant, and they are always there,” Barrett said in testimony before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriation Committee. Personal security details are “necessary now in daily activities” for the nine justices, she added.
Barrett revealed that just six weeks ago, someone made a SWAT attack call on her that prompted a significant local law enforcement response. She shared that the justices have also routinely received anonymous deliveries, often sent in the name of the son of a judge who was murdered by a disgruntled lawyer unhappy with the judge’s decision in his case.
“These pizzas and other things sent to us and our immediate family members are meant to intimidate and harass us,” Barrett said.
These incidents follow a significant uptick in the threat level in 2022, after an early version of the Dobbs’ ruling—a significant case before the Court on abortion rights—was leaked. A woman attempted to assassinate Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Barrett was even provided with a bulletproof vest to wear in the aftermath.
“I did not 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,” said Barrett, who is the mother of seven children and joined the Court in 2020.
Supreme Court justices share a unique profile in that they are iconic, have high recognizability, institutional significance, and substantial political impact. These are all factors that the ASIS International Executive Protection Standard has identified as making someone an attractive target, says Jonathan Wackrow, managing director of SRG Risk and co-author of The Protector’s Edge: Leadership Through Strategy and Action.
“Historically, justices existed without visible security, driving themselves and visibly unprotected,” Wackrow explains. “The lack of hardening made them comparatively soft targets compared with officials who have carried protective details for decades.”
Both Kagan and Barrett testified that the justices have received a significant number of threats during the past several years. As of 15 July, the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) has tracked 383 total threats to judges in fiscal year 2026—compared to 509 in 2024 and 564 in 2025.
The increase in threats is the result of multiple factors converging at once, Wackrow adds. The political temperature in the United States has risen significantly and the Court’s high-profile rulings on abortion, voting rights, and executive power are directly impacting people’s lives.
“With this, rulings become personal, and for the justice with a lifetime appointment, anger and frustration redirect toward the individual rather than a policy or party,” Wackrow adds. “Social media accelerates this frustration. It generates real-time commentary and doxes the justices’ personal information, including home addresses and daily routines, pulled form open sources, creating a permissive environment for personal targeting.”
For most of its history, the Court has not had executive protection for its justices. Kagan spoke to this dynamic, sharing in testimony that when she joined the Court in 2010, she would drive herself to and from work, and had no security detail except for on the occasional high-profile work appearance when USMS would step in.
The Court only began to radically change its approach to personal security after Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016 in Texas and the closest security personnel—USMS officers—was several hours away. The incident helped spur a congressional review, followed by recommendations from the chief justice on new security practices for the Court that included executive protection and residential security for all justices.
The USMS stepped in to fill this role, but Barrett said that in 2024 the USMS alerted the Court that it was not able to sustain that level of support and asked the Court’s Police Department to take that responsibility on. The Court’s currently using a mix of police officers and contract personnel to provide the justices with security details of four to eight people.
But both Barrett and Kagan said that it was not feasible to manage the protection needs of justices with teams that are this small. The officers are often asked to work significant overtime hours and back-to-back shifts, making them at risk for burnout.
“I have a detail of four to eight people and when they have to monitor you around the clock, when they drop me off at 11 at night, and then it’s the same team that has to come back in the morning, it’s just a lot of hours,” Barrett said.
Caleb Gilbert, founder and CEO of White Glove Protection Group and chair of the ASIS International Executive Protection Community, says that burnout is a constant challenge for executive protection practitioners. His company manages this problem by limiting the number of days in a row that practitioners work and designing teams where personnel rotate to cover shifts.
“When we start the detail, we explain this process and that there’s going to be a rotation to protect the mental health of our protective agents,” he says. “You’re going to receive the same consistent level of protection, the same consistent policies and procedures, but it will be different people and you’ll like them all. And if they don’t, then we adjust accordingly until we are able to meet that standard. That’s the only way that I’ve found in the last few decades to be able to create a sustainable and healthy life cycle for agents.”
Kagan said that the goal is to have 477 officers on staff so the Court can build up protection details to at least 12 people and not have to rely on contract personnel. But she admitted that around 150 positions remained unfilled and that becoming fully staffed would likely not be possible for several years.
“You want a completely stable workforce, so people who are providing you with security really know you,” Kagan added. “To the extent that we’re relying on the Marshals Service, they’re coming, they’re going, they have other responsibilities. They probably won’t be committed to an individual justice or to the Court full time.”
Wackrow agrees that dedicated personnel for executive protection is a best practice.
“Protection depends on the detail’s ability to recognize when something in the principal’s routine or environment has changed, and that recognition only develops through sustained proximity,” he adds. “A team that has worked with a justice for years will notice an unfamiliar car or a shift in behavior far faster than a rotating or contract agent.
“Continuity also builds trust,” Wackrow continues. “A justice who knows their detail is more likely to adjust a route or accept an inconvenience when asked. Where personnel rotates frequently, that relationship has to be rebuilt constantly, and rapport gaps translate into compliance gaps.”
Gilbert adds that due to the nature of their work, executive protection agents tend to learn intimate details about their protectee’s lives. Gaining the trust and confidence of a protectee is essential to the work that executive protection agents do and is only built with time, he adds.
The protectee has “confidence of knowing that the person who knows the most sensitive things about my life isn’t going to switch to a different job tomorrow,” he says. “They’re dedicated, full-time, to me—to my world. They’re going to be here long-term.”
But visible agents are just a small part of an effective executive protection program, which begins with a needs analysis and risk assessment to examine the threat environment, residential and workplace security, and public exposure, Wackrow says. The outcome of that assessment then drives the staffing and protection model.
For the justices, a functioning detail would include a detail leader, a rotation of close-protection agents, a driver, and security advance personnel, he adds.
“It must also be informed by intelligence,” he continues. “A protective intelligence function that continuously gathers and analyzes information on threats, persons of interest, and patterns of life exposure is critical to a program’s success.”
And it’s not just the physical security of the justices, it’s their digital security, too. Kagan said that it is critical that the work of the Court—including private correspondence and communication between members—be protected from outside interference and snooping.
“We can’t do our business—we can’t engage in confidential communications, which is the best way to operate, to be fully open with one’s colleagues about one’s views—if you think that those views are going to appear on the front page of a newspaper,” she explained. “If you do, you pull back. You don’t have the kinds of conversations that I think the Court really depends on to do great work.”
While the Court is a unique example, logical protection is a core pillar of any protective program. Compromised phones or intercepted emails can expose a protectee’s location and schedule, Wackrow says.
“For the judiciary, there is a layer beyond personal safety,” he adds. “It is protecting the deliberative process of the Court. Draft opinions and conference discussions carry a confidentiality interest tied to the Court’s integrity—not a physical threat. That is why technical surveillance countermeasures, sweeping chambers for covert devices, have become as central to judicial protection as any physical measure. A leak, in this context, is a security failure.”
Creating and sustaining a program that encapsulates both physical and logical protection is expensive, though. Covering the costs of continuous posts, shifts, leave, and training requires a significant commitment of full-time personnel.
“Add equipment, technology, training, protective intelligence, and case management, and costs climb quickly,” Wackrow explains. “Across nine justices, each with a distinct threat profile, the staffing math becomes substantial, consistent with the scale of the current funding request.”
The ramp up of the justice’s executive protection teams also comes at a time when it is increasingly challenging to recruit and retain personnel.
Kagan said that the Court is keeping its salaries and pay structure in line with other departments in Washington, D.C., to remain competitive, but this pay level will not match what the private sector can offer, Wackrow adds. Instead, he suggests that the Court focus on draw candidates in by providing a defined career path, investment in specialized training and certification, and a mission worth taking pride in.
“Retention comes down largely to staffing math. Protective work carries irregular hours and sustained psychological weight,” Wackrow says. “Understaffed details lean on overtime, which accelerates fatigue and attrition. Adequate staffing ratios are mechanisms that keep a program functional over years.”
Gilbert says he’s aware of many companies looking to hire executive protection personnel but have not been able to fill spots fast enough. Gilbert says his firm has been addressing this challenge by focusing on recruiting people from nontraditional backgrounds who are enthusiastic about life, have strong social skills, thrive in a challenging environment, and demonstrate attention to detail. Traveling nurses, for instance, tend to check a lot of these boxes.
“You add training, coaching, mentorship, and the hard skills, and then over the course of five years you have somebody with an amazing medical set and the ability to be a chameleon in any environment,” Gilbert adds.
Recognition for their work also matters in retaining personnel, Wackrow adds.
“Agents who feel valued and have input into planning stay longer,” Wackrow explains. “Contract support fills capacity gaps but cannot substitute for the continuity a dedicated core team provides. The programs that weather recruiting challenges best treat their people as a long-term investment, rather than a rotating resource.”
For more on threats to the judicial system, revisit Joshua Sinai’s 2024 Security Management article “In Polarized Environments, Attorneys and Judges Face a Multitude of Threats.”
