Heightened threat environment for judiciary raises concerns

WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- The sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was recently targeted with a bomb threat, law enforcement officials said, shedding light on growing concern about threats to members of the judiciary and their families.

Mary Graw Leary, a professor at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law and a former federal prosecutor, told OSV News "the judiciary is specifically designed not to be political and specifically designed to be independent, and is often the last check on the other two branches of government."

"So there's an added dimension when someone is trying to get a court to do something not based on the facts and evidence in front of them, which is their job, but based on something else, is a particular concern when it's the judiciary because that is often the last backstop," she said.

The Charleston Police Department said it received an emailed bomb threat earlier in March concerning Amanda Coney Williams, Barrett's sister, who resides in that South Carolina city.
Police responded to her residence and determined it was a false alarm, adding the missive contained the words "Free Palestine!"

Barrett has recently been the subject of criticism from some far-right activists after issuing some recent rulings that sided against the Trump administration, such as rejecting its freeze on foreign aid funding.

A heightened threat environment for Supreme Court justices comes amid a series of high-profile or controversial rulings by the nation's highest court on topics including abortion, presidential immunity, the administrative state and gun policy.

In 2022, shortly after a draft of the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was leaked but before it issued that ruling, a man carrying a gun near Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Maryland residence was arrested after threatening to kill the justice, citing that leak.

But it is not only Supreme Court justices or their families who have been the subject of threats or violence. CBS News recently reported that a pair of federal judges expressed concern about an increase in threats during a call with reporters hosted by the Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for the federal judiciary.

Chief Justice John Roberts' 2024 annual report acknowledged "a significant uptick in identified threats at all levels of the judiciary" as among what he called threats to judicial independence.

"According to United States Marshals Service statistics, the volume of hostile threats and communications directed at judges has more than tripled over the past decade," Roberts wrote at the time, also citing threats against justices' family members, as well as other "attempts to intimidate" like doxxing, or sharing private information publicly.

Reuters reported earlier in March that U.S. Marshals have warned federal judges of unusually high threat levels amid criticism of the judiciary by individuals including tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk.

Leary also cited the July 2020 murder of CUA student Daniel Anderl, the son of federal Judge Esther Salas and attorney Mark Anderl who was fatally shot by a gunman posing as a deliveryman at the family's New Jersey home, as an example of threats to judges and their families from dangerous people.

"It brings another dimension of concern when the threat is not only for the particular person, the judge, and their safety, but then the safety of their staff or their family," she said. "You can imagine that somehow influencing decisions or threatening to influence them, and that's not what we want for our justice system."