House sets vote on security for Supreme Court justices after partisan tiff

WASHINGTON – House leaders stepped back Monday from a brewing partisan fight over security arrangements for the families of Supreme Court justices and employees after top Senate Republicans threatened to escalate the tiff – potentially leaving those around the court unprotected amid a rising spate of threats.

The office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a late-night advisory that the chamber would vote Tuesday on a Senate-passed bill that would extend security to family members of Supreme Court justices, but not to family members of judicial clerks or other staffers.

Family of those personnel were included in a competing House bill that Democrats had hoped to pass this week. But after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., delivered an unusual public ultimatum Monday night, threatening to block the House bill from passage, Democrats changed course.

“The security issue is related to the Supreme Court justices, not to nameless staff that no one knows,” McConnell told reporters Monday in a rare Capitol hallway interview.

Hoyer said Tuesday that House Democrats backed down because the Senate bill is “the only thing that can pass, frankly, and we want to get it done.”

The episode has illustrated how nasty and partisan virtually any issue dealing with the high court has become in American politics – especially after the leak last month of a draft opinion indicating that justices are preparing to overturn the decision granting the right to an abortion.

Should the House approve the Senate bill on Tuesday as expected, it would go to President Joe Biden for his signature.

The Senate passed its Supreme Court security bill on May 5, days after the draft abortion opinion was leaked. But the House did not act on it, instead exploring a broader bill.

Matters came to a head last week after a 26-year-old armed California man was arrested outside the Maryland home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The man, Nicholas Roske, told police that he had come intending to assassinate Kavanaugh because of the leaked abortion opinion but called 911 and surrendered after spotting U.S. Marshals guarding Kavanaugh’s home.

As the incident illustrated, the justices are already entitled to round-the-clock security, and court employees can be protected as warranted. But federal law does not provide for the protection of immediate family members.

Roske’s arrest turbocharged the politics around the court security legislation on Capitol Hill, prompting McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to lambaste Democrats for not voting on the Senate bill.

McCarthy said in floor remarks Tuesday that passing the narrower bill would send “a clear message to the left-wing radicals: You cannot intimidate the Supreme Court justices.”

“It should not have taken a threat against Justice Kavanaugh to force action,” he said. “I’m glad it will be heading to the president’s desk without any poison pills to delay it further.”

But Democratic leaders expressed puzzlement at the GOP position, arguing that employees’ families ought to be entitled to protection, as well, at the discretion of the Supreme Court marshal, its top security officer.

After the leak of the draft abortion opinion, the names of law clerks whom some observers suspected of being the leaker circulated in internet forums and some fringe news sites. Some Democrats have privately speculated that Republicans do not want to protect staffers’ families because many on the political right believe that a liberal clerk leaked the draft abortion opinion, though no evidence has emerged to support that allegation.

Asked Monday why Republicans wanted to omit staff families from the bill, McConnell said House Democrats were taking “an unnecessary shot at sending a message about how proud they were that something leaked over at the Supreme Court.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who co-wrote the Senate bill with Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said, “People know who the Supreme Court members are. They don’t know who the staff is.”

“All we’re trying to do is give the justices the very same protection that’s available to members of Congress,” he added, saying Democrats were “playing with fire.”

Meanwhile, some see GOP support for expanding security for justices’ families not only as a reaction to the leak of the draft abortion opinion but as a gesture of support for Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, whose role in spreading misinformation about the 2020 presidential election has recently been publicized.

Still, the bill is expected to pass with overwhelming support Tuesday afternoon, including from Democrats.

Hoyer said Tuesday that he did not know why, despite a month of negotiations, Republicans opposed adding staff families to the security legislation. “But it is what it is,” he said, “and we’re going to move the bill.”