Funding Shortfalls Adversely Affect Key Judiciary Programs

A shortfall in this year’s congressional appropriations is significantly impacting the Judiciary’s ability to ensure security at courthouses at a time of rising threats to federal judges and impairing efforts to provide critical legal defense services to people who can’t afford to hire lawyers.

Those concerns were outlined in an April 10 letter (PDF) to appropriators in Congress by Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., Judicial Conference secretary, and Judge Amy J. St. Eve, chair of the Conference’s Budget Committee.

The continuing resolution enacted in March provides the Judicial Branch with $8.6 billion, $391 million less than the Judicial Conference had requested. The branch had requested exceptions to the governmentwide funding freeze imposed by the resolution, but the requests were excluded in the final legislation. As a result, many of the Judiciary’s accounts are frozen for a second consecutive year, leaving them operating at fiscal year 2023 levels.

One of them is the $750 million Court Security program.

“We have significant concerns about our ability to properly secure federal courthouses given current resource levels,” Conrad and St. Eve wrote. “Consecutive years of flat security funding comes at a time when threats against federal judges and courthouses are escalating, making this situation unsustainable in the current environment.”

Currently, 67 judges involved in high profile cases are receiving enhanced online security screening services provided by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the U.S. Marshals Service, which is also operating at reduced staffing levels as a result of the funding freeze. In some instances, the Marshals Service has had to take “extraordinary measures” to ensure the safety of judges, the letter said.

The Judiciary’s Defender Services program was also significantly underfunded for fiscal year 2025. It received $1.45 billion, $129 million below the necessary level. A hiring freeze already in place was extended until at least the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. And the Judiciary will have to defer a projected $92 million in payments to private defense attorneys, who are appointed by the courts under the Criminal Justice Act to represent defendants who can’t afford to retain counsel.

“These are payments for constitutionally required legal work that has already been performed but that will be left unpaid for months simply because we cannot afford to make the payments,” Conrad and St. Eve wrote, noting that some attorneys may decline to accept future appointments as a result.

A shortage of qualified defense attorneys willing to take cases could create “unlawful delays in the constitutional right of defendants to a speedy and fair trial,” they said. 

The freeze is also having an adverse impact on maintaining necessary staff levels in probation and pretrial services, as well as in clerks of court offices. 

“Some clerks of court offices report they cannot sufficiently staff public counters to assist individuals seeking court information or help with filing,” the judges said, also predicting that “probation offices will have to focus limited supervision resources on the most violent, high-risk offenders, leaving low-to-mid risk offenders with less supervision, increasing the risk of offenders committing new crimes.”

As the Judiciary prepares to submit its budget request for fiscal year 2026, Conrad and St. Eve emphasized the need for congressional appropriators to provide adequate funding to help the Judiciary mitigate some of the adverse impacts of the recent appropriations shortfalls. Their letter was sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate appropriations committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over Judiciary funding.