The federal courts continue to grapple with rising threats of violence against judges, according to one of the judiciary’s leaders.
“It’s clearly a brave new world when it comes to security, judges included,” said Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, the chair of the executive committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Judge Sutton spoke Tuesday at a virtual press event that coincided with the conference’s biannual meeting in Washington. His public presentation was focused on the judiciary’s budget. Funding for judicial security has remained frozen for three fiscal years.
New legislation proposed by House Republicans ahead of a potential government shutdown later this month would provide $58 million in additional money for the U.S. States Marshals Service and to protect the Supreme Court, as well as $30 million for lawmakers’ security. But it does not contain any new money specifically earmarked for the judiciary to spend on the protection of lower-court judges, who have faced a spate of rising threats.
After steadily rising for several years, threats against judges spiked after Donald J. Trump returned to office. During a six-week period beginning in March, 162 judges received threats, according to data from the U.S. Marshals Service, more than twice as many as during the previous five months. That sudden rise in threats coincided with harsh and personalized criticism from the White House, directed against judges who ruled against the administration.
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday that the bureau now has 17 open investigations into threats against federal judges.
The lack of new money means the judiciary won’t be able to update aging systems that provide physical security for judges at courthouses, said Judge Amy J. St. Eve, the chair of the conference’s budget committee.
“Magnetometers, videos, special lock systems — all of that equipment is what suffers because we don’t have the money to pay for it,” she said.
The annual gathering largely takes place behind closed doors.
But people familiar with the session in March said one judge expressed worry that the White House could use its control of the marshals service to cut back on judicial security. That same scenario was raised in a congressional hearing before the March conference, where a judge suggested the conference would consider whether the judiciary should assume control of its own security.
The role of a judge necessarily involves allocating disappointment between two opposing parties, said Judge Sutton, which makes criticism part of the job. “The problem is going from disagreement to threats,” he said. “That’s what’s problematic.”
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