Police responded Wednesday evening to a swatting call at the Virginia residence of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and quickly determined the report was false, according to Fairfax County police. Barrett was on the bench Thursday morning with her colleagues, reading summaries of two opinions she wrote, and made no public mention of the incident.
A Fairfax County police public information officer said officers responded at approximately 9:02 p.m. to what was reported as a swatting call at the residence of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice in Fairfax County. Police said they immediately coordinated with Supreme Court Police personnel assigned to the residence and quickly determined the report was fictitious. No additional police resources were used.
A partial audio recording later surfaced on X on Thursday, with a caller reporting sounds of gunshots. In the recording, law enforcement can be heard describing a suspicious noise at 24-hour security coverage for a high-priority resident of the county. The sequence matched the kind of false emergency that swatting calls are designed to trigger.
The incident landed at a moment when the court remains under heavy security pressure. Threats against justices have risen for years, and the anxiety sharpened after protests outside conservative justices’ homes in 2022 following the leaked Dobbs draft opinion. The threats also became impossible to dismiss after a California man was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home and later charged with attempted murder.
That backdrop gives Thursday’s incident its weight. Mike Lee, the Utah senator, said swatting is an attempt to get an innocent person killed, adding that in this case the target was a sitting Supreme Court justice. He said the proper response would be to put the offender in prison for many, many years. Barrett’s appearance on the bench the next morning showed the court was not disrupted, but the call underscored how exposed the justices remain even inside their own guarded homes.
