Amy Coney Barrett says she had to explain bulletproof vests to her children as she pleads for more protection

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett pleaded for a boost in security funding  as she revealed a heartbreaking moment with her own child. 

Barrett was on Capitol Hill alongside Justice Elena Kagan to address the staggering rise in violent threats against members of the federal judiciary, including their own families.

The hearing comes as threats against members of the federal judiciary are on track to rise by 38 percent in 2026, according to data from the US Marshals, a staggering increase, building on a 25 percent rise from the previous year.

‘Those statistics sound abstract,’ Barrett told House  lawmakers about the rise in threats. ‘But being on the receiving end of them is not.’

Barrett, who was appointed by Donald Trump, how her protective detail had sent her home with a bulletproof vest a few years earlier – when the threats against her ‘were particularly intense.’ 

‘My security details sent me home with a bulletproof vest,’ Barrett recounted. ‘I carried it into my house, put it into my bedroom, dropped it down on the table, turned around, and my 12-year-old son was standing in the middle of my bedroom.’

‘He wanted to know what it was and why I had it,’ Barrett, the only sitting justice with school-aged children, said of the exchange with her son. ‘I didn’t know how to respond.’

The Supreme Court justices are far from the only individuals who have pressed for heightened security for federal judges in recent years. 

These threats, the justices stressed, have impacted them on a personal level. Barrett was the victim of an attempted incident six weeks earlier, as she noted Tuesday, and her sister, who lives in South Carolina, was the target of a separate threat last year.

‘They have required me [and] my children to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about,’ Barrett said.

‘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 at the outset of the hearing. ‘But as the Chief Justice has said, all members of the court continue to do their jobs as they do legally right, adjudicating cases without fear or favor.’

The Supreme Court justices are far from the only individuals who have pressed for heightened security for federal judges in recent years.

There has been a rise in online harassment, threats of physical violence, and ‘doxxing’ judges at their home addresses, both via swatting – or the malicious act of calling in a false threat to SWAT teams or other tactical law enforcement, causing them to show up to a victim’s house without warning – and by sending them unsolicited pizzas at their home addresses.

Justices noted that the pizza deliveries are sometimes made in the name of a judge’s son who was shot and killed in 2020 after he opened the door to a disgruntled individual disguised as a delivery person.

These threats, the justices stressed, have impacted them on a personal level.

‘They have required me [and] my children to think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about.

Their remarks come as Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has continued to speak out about the rise in threats against the high court – most recently in March, during a rare public speech to students at Rice University.

‘Personally directed hostility is dangerous,’ Roberts told the audience, ‘and it’s got to stop.’

Roberts’s remarks were seen at the time as a not-so-subtle nod to President Donald Trump, who blasted a federal judge on social media hours earlier as ‘wacky, nasty, crooked’ and ‘totally out of control’ for ruling against the administration.