Barrett and Kagan Will Take the Court's 225 Million Dollar Budget to the House on July 14

A rare walk across the street

On July 14, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan will cross First Street to appear before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government (Roll Call, July 7, 2026). They will present the Supreme Court's budget request for fiscal 2027. The subject is routine. The event is not.

Justices almost never testify. The last time any appeared before House members was 2019, when Kagan and Justice Samuel Alito went before the same subcommittee. The last time justices testified before the Senate was 2011, when Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee (Roll Call, July 7, 2026; Washington Post, July 7, 2026). A Court that guards its distance from the elected branches is sending two of its members to answer questions in public, on the record, about money. That alone makes July 14 worth watching.

The ask, read all the way down

The request is 225.1 million dollars for fiscal 2027. It sits in two accounts: 207.0 million dollars for salaries and expenses, and 18.1 million dollars for care of the building and grounds (Roll Call, July 7, 2026; Congressional Research Service, Judiciary Budget Request for FY2027, 2026). Inside the request is a 14.6 million dollar increase for the Supreme Court Police, directed at protective activities tied to the justices, their homes, and their families (Congressional Research Service, Judiciary Budget Request for FY2027, 2026).

The size of the increase depends on the baseline, and the two numbers in circulation tell a fuller story together than either does alone. Reported against a normal prior year, the request runs roughly 10 percent above fiscal 2026 (Roll Call, July 7, 2026). Measured against the fiscal 2026 level that included supplemental funding, the Congressional Research Service puts the increase at 29.0 percent (Congressional Research Service, Judiciary Budget Request for FY2027, 2026). Neither figure is wrong. The honest read is that the Court is asking for a real increase, most of it concentrated in security, and the headline percentage swings with the comparison year.

Why the security line keeps growing

The security money has a documented history behind it. Since the 2022 leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, protesters have appeared outside justices' homes, and one man was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh's residence in what prosecutors described as a plot to kill him. Justices have received protection around the clock from the United States Marshals and the Supreme Court Police since then (Roll Call, July 7, 2026).

The pressure is not confined to the nine. The broader judiciary request asks Congress for 920.9 million dollars to place security officers at every federal courthouse in the country, citing a rise in threats against federal judges (Congressional Research Service, Judiciary Budget Request for FY2027, 2026). The Marshals recorded 509 threats against 379 federal judges in fiscal 2024 and 564 threats against 396 judges in fiscal 2025 (U.S. Marshals Service, Protective Investigations Threat Statistics). The Justice Department told Congress that threats to federal judges have doubled over historic norms, and that the Marshals investigated more than 1,000 serious threats over five years, with more than 50 people criminally charged (U.S. Marshals Service; Bloomberg Law, 2026). These numbers cross ideological lines, and the funding request treats them as a security problem rather than a partisan one.

The standing behind the questions

The hearing arrives while public regard for the Court sits low by its own history. In 2026 Gallup found 41 percent of Americans approve of how the Supreme Court is handling its job, in line with the 40 to 43 percent range of the past two years. Confidence in the Court fell to 25 percent, a new low and a drop of 11 points in a single year. Trust in the judicial branch stood at 49 percent, near the bottom of Gallup's long trend (Gallup, 2026).

Read carefully, the sharpest movement is not a collapse in overall approval, which has held roughly steady. It is the widening gap between the parties. Gallup measured 81 percent trust in the judicial branch among Republicans and 23 percent among Democrats, a 58 point gap that is the largest the pollster has recorded (Gallup, 2026). The Court is not losing the country evenly. It is being seen through increasingly different lenses, and the same rulings that lift its standing with one half of the public lower it with the other.

What the hearing actually settles

Strip away the drama and July 14 is a branch of government explaining, in public and under questioning, what it costs to operate and why. Most of the increase it seeks is to keep its members and the judges below them safe, at a moment when the threat data is rising and measurable. That is not a sign of an institution in retreat. It is the ordinary, open machinery of accountability doing its work, with two justices sitting where any agency head would sit.

The Court's long record is where its standing is ultimately settled, not in a single budget hearing. For how the people who lead it compare across the full sweep of American history, see our rankings of chief justices and Supreme Court justices by influence. The budget line and the approval line move year to year. The record is the thing that lasts.