Supreme Court Gets Last-Minute $30M Boost for Justices’ Security

Congressional spending leaders tacked on an extra $30 million for security for US Supreme Court justices in an unrelated spending bill following a last-minute request from court officials, boosting resources as threats against federal judges rise.

The additional funding was included in legislation released Tuesday as part of a bipartisan deal between House and Senate spending leaders to fund the Department of Homeland Security. It was released less than a week after the House passed a spending package that includes funding for federal courts and other agencies.

Court officials belatedly pressed Congress for more money because “something got fouled up with security” funding, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. They agreed to testify to the committee to justify the increased budget, she added.

The eleventh-hour pitch came too late to be added to the Financial Services-General Government bill that normally funds the judicial branch. The inclusion bumped up the judiciary’s appropriations for the fiscal year to $9.2 billion.

The additional money, available through September 2028, represents the latest funding infusion for the Supreme Court. It got an extra $28 million in November in the short-term funding extension that reopened the government following a 43-day shutdown.

It also comes as the judiciary works to take on additional responsibilities to cover round-the-clock protection of the Supreme Court justices.

The US Marshals Service, the Justice Department agency that protects the federal judiciary, began providing 24/7 security at the justices’ private residences in 2022, following the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his Maryland home.

The effort has strained the agency’s resources, and the judiciary has asked Congress for money in recent budgets to transition the residential security responsibilities from the marshals to the Supreme Court police.

The judiciary said in its April budget request that the money it requested would allow the high court’s police to take over this mission by the end of this fiscal year.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said lawmakers added the last-minute funding for the benefit of the Supreme Court’s security.

“We just want to make sure nothing happens to any of our justices,” he said.

The Marshals Service has tracked 166 threats against federal judges since Oct. 1, according to the latest data. More than 560 threats were made against judges last fiscal year, the data shows.

Congressional appropriators originally gave the high court $135 million in its expense account for fiscal 2026, which ends in September, matching the judiciary’s full request when combined with the earlier money in the stopgap measure.

Appropriators ultimately opted to use the Homeland Security funding vehicle for the extra judicial security money because it was one of the last bills to be negotiated, said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), who chairs the subcommittee overseeing DHS’ budget.

“You’re the only 24-hour food mart,” he recalled hearing during the last bout of negotiations. “When they came to us, it was kind of a surprise, like, ‘wait a minute, that’s not our neck of the woods.’ And it was like, ‘you’re the only neck of the woods that’s still open.’”

The DHS funding bill similarly gave an extra $140 million for air traffic organization activities that would normally be funded by the Transportation-Housing and Urban Development bill. That will go toward funding President Donald Trump’s promise of a bonus to air traffic controllers who worked during last year’s government shutdown, Amodei said.

“Nobody remembered that until the last minute,” Amodei said. “We inherited that.”

DHS is already a difficult department to fund given its oversight of politically charged immigration policy. But that agency is flush with cash from Republicans’ mega tax law they passed through the partisan budget reconciliation process last year, decreasing the pressure to fund its operations through discretionary appropriations.

That funding package, which also funds the Internal Revenue Service and other financial services agencies, passed the House last week and awaits action by the Senate.

A spokesperson for the judiciary’s administrative office declined to comment. A Supreme Court spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment on the additional funding.