Amy Coney Barrett was given bulletproof vest amid 'intense' threats following Dobbs leak

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told members of Congress she was given a bulletproof vest following the leak of a draft decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, as she and fellow Justice Elena Kagan made the case for additional security funding for the nation’s top court.

Barrett and Kagan testified Tuesday before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government in support of the Supreme Court’s budget request for fiscal year 2027. Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, said in his opening remarks that the court has requested $225 million for fiscal year 2027 — a 53.6% increase over the fiscal year 2026 budget. Fiscal year 2027 begins Oct. 1.

The threats against Supreme Court justices that emerged following the leak of the draft Dobbs decision, which found that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion, were a major topic of discussion throughout the hearing. The leak came several weeks before the official Dobbsruling was released, and the signal that justices were prepared to reverse the decades-old Roe v. Wade decision sparked outrage among abortion-rights activists.

After Kagan told the panel that Supreme Court Police are expecting a “very substantial 38% annual increase in threats” against the justices this year, Barrett said “those statistics sound abstract but being on the receiving end of them is not." She used her testimony to describe how the threats have affected her personally.

She said the threats have required her children to “think about and see things that children should not have to see or think about.”

“Threats to my life were particularly intense a few years ago around the time of the Dobbs leak,” Barrett recalled. “My security detail sent me home with a bulletproof vest and 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 and I didn’t know how to respond.”

“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," she continued.

She also described a recent “swatting incident” in which one of her sons tried to leave the house to see friends, only to find police cars in the street responding to “a false report of gunshots and raised voices” at her home.

Referencing Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2024 year-end report, Joyce cited “U.S. Marshal Service data showing that hostile threats and communications toward judges had more than tripled over the preceding decade,” along with the investigation of “more than 1,000 serious threats against federal justices in just the last five years.”

Ranking Member Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., added that, per the U.S. Marshal Service, “more than 200 federal judges have had threats made against them in this fiscal year alone.”

The most serious threat to materialize after the Dobbs leak — directed at Justice Brett Kavanaugh — also came up during the hearing. In June 2022, a month after the Dobbs draft was leaked and two weeks before the official decision was released, Nicholas John Roske was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home after telling law enforcement he wanted to kill the justice, citing outrage over the expected overturning of Roe.

Roske was found carrying multiple weapons, including a gun, a knife and pepper spray. Following the assassination attempt against Kavanaugh, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Supreme Court Police Parity Act, which expanded police protection to “any member of the immediate family of the Chief Justice, any Associate Justice, or any officer of the Supreme Court if the Marshal determines such protection is necessary.”