Growing judicial security risks deserve innovative solutions

By virtue of their positions, judges are particularly vulnerable to both verbal and physical personal attacks. Today, threats against judges at all levels—appointed by presidents of both major parties—only continue to intensify. That’s why the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO), Judicial Conference and Congress should consider structural reforms to address judicial security, especially with regard to the U.S. Marshals Service, according to a letter sent to the AO by CREW President and Chief Executive Officer Donald Sherman and Judge Jeremy Fogel.

In asking for more security funding for the Supreme Court, Justice Elena Kagan explained to Congress that “threats have come very close” for some justices, with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett adding that she has had to explain to her son why she now owns a bulletproof vest.

The list goes on. A lower court judge received an email telling her to “eat a bullet.” Another received an envelope filled with pictures of dead bodies and blood. Another’s floor plan for their house was published online. Another had to move to a secure location with their family for several days after receiving a series of violent threats. ” Others have confronted “pizza doxxing”: receiving anonymous pizza deliveries to their homes in the name of Daniel Anderl, a young man killed by a lawyer who had appeared before his mother, federal district judge Esther Salas. Judges have reported changing their commutes, installing security cameras and panic buttons in their homes and paying out of pocket for private security.

Congress has responded to calls for increases in funding for judicial security for both the lower courts and the Supreme Court. But in addition to the need for increased funding for personal, courthouse and cyber security, judges have raised concerns that the executive branch could interfere with the U.S. Marshals Service’s—which sits in the executive branch but whose primary responsibility is to the courts—judicial security function, strip security from a judge or the judiciary altogether or divert resources to other priorities such as immigration enforcement. The AO, Judicial Conference and Congress should consider structural reforms that would address the USMS’s potentially conflicting responsibilities to the Attorney General and the orders of federal judges. Specifically, we recommend legislation that would–

1. Implement stronger guardrails for the USMS’s judicial security requirements.
2. Expressly permit the Chief Justice, through delegation to the Supreme Court marshal and chief of police, Judicial Security Director or circuit executives or other local representatives, to enter into reimbursable agreements with states, localities and private security companies for the provision of additional and emergency security.
3. Establish a central Judicial Security Office within the judicial branch.
4. Create a permanent, indefinite appropriation to pay claims made on reimbursable agreements. 
5. Establish an Inspector General for Judicial Security to provide oversight and independent reviews of these additional responsibilities and the use of security funding.

These recommendations would leave the primary responsibility for judicial and court security with the USMS, which has the relevant expertise to perform these duties, while ensuring that the judicial branch does not experience any security delays or interruptions. Now more than ever, it is imperative that the government take action to protect the independence of the federal judiciary.