A ‘Chilling’ Look At The Threats Against Sonia Sotomayor And Other Supreme Court Justices

One of the most heartbreaking stories in 2020 — a year filled with awful news — was the shooting at the house of federal judge Esther Salas, which injured her husband, defense attorney Mark Anderl, and killed her 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl. The suspect in the case quickly emerged as Roy Den Hollander, a men’s rights attorney and former Cravath associate, whose online rants specifically targeted Judge Salas.

After the murder of her son, Judge Salas quickly became an advocate for increasing protection for federal judges. Of course, perpetual impediment to actual governing, Rand Paul, blocked the proposed legislation, named after the judge’s dead son.

Last night, 60 Minutes aired a powerful interview with Judge Salas where she told the world that, despite everything she went through, she’s going to continue her work as a federal judge, “As far as what I do on the bench, no, that’s not going to change. I’m not going to let [a murderer] take away my integrity, my work ethic, my pride.”

Salas also revealed that Hollander may have had bigger plans than attacking her. In their search of Hollander’s locker:

[The FBI] “found another gun, a Glock, more ammunition. But the most troubling thing they found was a manila folder with a workup on Justice Sonia Sotomayor.” Salas added,  ”Who knows what could have happened? But we need to understand that judges are at risk. That we put ourselves in great danger every day for doing our jobs.”

News of this threat against Justice Sotomayor dovetails with a newly released opinion by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2010, detailing the additional security needed to protect the then-Supreme Court nominee, as reported by Law.com:

The opinion justified the U.S. government’s use of an “unanticipated needs” fund to pay the security-related hotel expenses of the then-Supreme Court nominee.

Written in 2010 by then-DOJ lawyer Jeannie Rhee, the OLC opinion said Sotomayor’s expenses fell within the law’s characterization of “unanticipated” because the U.S. Marshals Service “unexpectedly received information about the president’s nominee that caused it to determine that she required the protection of a security detail, and to request that she stay at a hotel with appropriate security features.”

But it’s more than Justice Sotomayor who gets threats. Fix the Court tweeted their that FOIA requests, submitted in the wake of Antonin Scalia’s death, showed “chilling” results — over 3,000 pages of redacted reported threats against Supreme Court justices:

After Justice Scalia died in 2016—with zero U.S. Marshals within hundreds of miles—we submitted #FOIAs to try to understand why the justices were not protected 100% or near-100% of the time.

What we learned was chilling. (1/3)

— Fix the Court (@FixTheCourt) February 20, 2021

Each time a justice takes a trip outside of D.C. in which they're accompanied by deputy marshals, a "trip report" is generated.

Here are excerpts from spring 2017 trip reports for Justices Sotomayor, Thomas & Ginsburg under the section titled "reported threats." (2/3) pic.twitter.com/YahrufJ4t2

— Fix the Court (@FixTheCourt) February 20, 2021

Of course it's impossible to know what's under those redactions.

But large blacked out sections are consistent throughout—we have >3,000 pgs of rpts—suggesting ongoing threats.

No. 1 priority is keeping justices safe & we don't know if enough is being done in that regard. (3/3)

— Fix the Court (@FixTheCourt) February 20, 2021

Whatever’s underneath those redactions, it seems there are real and ongoing threats to the Supreme Court — something that the January 6th insurrection put into stark relief. It’s about time we did something about it.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).