Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Reuters
Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett are scheduled to testify before the House Appropriations subcommittee next week on the high court’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, according to a minutes released Tuesday.
Their testimony on July 14 will be the first time a Supreme Court justice has testified before Congress since 2019, when Kagan and Samuel Alito testified about the court’s budget request to the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee.
Kagan and Barrett will appear in front of the same panel.
Kagan has served on the court since 2010 after being appointed by then-Democratic President Barack Obama. Barrett has been a judge since 2020. She was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump.
CNBC has reached out to a Supreme Court spokesperson for comment on the scheduled testimony.
The hearing will take place two weeks after the Supreme Court releases its final opinion on the 2025-26 term.
Neither justice is expected to discuss it in testimony, but their opinions included rulings upholding constitutional birthright citizenship, a right that President Trump had sought to take away with an executive order. Barrett and Kagan were among the majority owners.
Mr. Kagan was also part of the 5-4 majority opinion that held that Mr. Trump could not fire Federal Reserve President Lisa Cook while her lawsuit to remove her continued in federal district court. In this case, Mr. Barrett was in the minority.
However, Barrett was the majority and Kagan was the minority in the ruling, which held that President Trump had the authority to fire Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. The decision gave the president the power to remove members of the nominally independent body.
In his 2019 opening statement to the subcommittee, Alito thanked the members for “providing significant additional security funding to the court last year.”
“We are leveraging these new funds carefully and intentionally, based on a thorough review of our current practices by highly regarded and experienced security experts,” Alito said.
Since this testimony, there have been growing concerns about the safety of the nine Supreme Court justices.
Safeguards and protections for judges were strengthened in May 2022 after Alito’s draft opinion overturning nearly half a century of Supreme Court precedent in Roe v. Wade, which held that abortion is a constitutional right, was leaked.
In response to the leak, protests erupted in front of the homes of Alito and two of the court’s conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
On June 8, 2022, a 26-year-old California man armed with a handgun, knife, pepper spray and robbery tools was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home after telling police he had traveled to kill the judge, according to court records.
The man, Nicholas Roske, told police he was upset about the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court reversed Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization when it was formally released a few weeks later.
Roethke pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Kavanaugh in April 2025 and was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison in October of the same year.
