Swatting of judges
For state and federal judges. The January 2024 wave hit Chutkan, Engoron, and others — the address came from the same broker pages anyone can search.
Run a free scan. No signup.How this plays out for judges
Judge swatting is its own pattern. The trigger is usually a ruling, not an incident. A controversial decision drops, the judge's name is in the opinion, and within hours the home address shows up on a forum or in a swatting call. The January 2024 wave hit state and federal judges across the country — Chutkan, Engoron, and others — see the 2024 federal-judge swatting wave.
The mechanics: the swatter pulls the judge's home address from a broker page, calls in a fake high-priority emergency, and waits for the response.
What's at stake
Your family at home when the entry happens. The responding officers, who are at risk too. The bench draws this kind of attention by design. Every controversial ruling makes a small group of people who feel personally wronged. Most never act. The handful who do find your house the same way anyone else can.
For federal judges, the risk is concentrated. There are only about 870 active Article III judges in the country. That's a small number with a lot of people angry at one or another of them at any given time.
What to do right now
If you've been swatted in the last 72 hours, see the swatting recovery checklist. Run the active-swatting-threat playbook for the time-bucketed steps if a controversial ruling is generating credible threats right now.
Federal judges: enroll in the Lieu Act — the federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, signed in 2022. The Administrative Office of the US Courts files batched removal demands across major brokers on your behalf. State court judges in IL have the Judicial Privacy Act. Other state judges fall back on the broker opt-out path. Run a free scan to see what's currently public.
How we handle it
We work alongside the federal program. We sweep broker sites — including the smaller ones the AOUSC doesn't always reach — and re-check every two weeks because re-listings happen. We sweep the household the same way: the Lieu Act covers immediate family, and we file across them.
For benches that want coordinated coverage for the full court, reach out.