Federal Judge Dolly M. Gee, chief of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, knew her rulings would be questioned when she took the job. But she didn’t expect the hateful vitriol.

“You’re dead. ... I’ll put a bullet in your head in the middle of your kitchen without you seeing it coming, or expecting it, ” said one message from a critic who was later indicted. “Think I’m playing? Casket dreams, sweetheart.”

Gee received another message from a different person who noted that her address was easily obtainable from the Internet: “I think I’ll pay you a visit soon. ... Trust me, it will be the worst day of your life.”

Said Gee: “I don’t think being a federal judge is a job for the fainthearted.”

Gee was among four federal judges from around the nation who spoke Thursday, March 19, during an online forum about the threats they’ve received amid a growing hostility toward the judiciary. So vicious is the criticism that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts this week took the rare step during an interview of deriding the trend: “Personally directed hostility is dangerous and it’s got to stop.”

Roberts’ comment came in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling against the Trump administration’s tariffs. The ruling prompted the president to call out the court majority as “unpatriotic,” “fools” and “lapdogs swayed by foreign interests.”

Threats in various forms

The panel was presented by the nonprofit “Speak Up for Justice” and featured district court Judges Gee and Michelle Williams Court in Los Angeles, Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., and Mark S. Norris in Nashville, Tennessee. All have been threatened for their rulings, in emails and voicemails. Sometimes in unwanted pizza deliveries. At least one judge not on the panel received a visit from SWAT after a bogus report of a crime at his home.

The message to federal court judges is clear: we know where you live. And in the case of Judge Court, where her children go to school.

“Because I got that threat and because it was related to my kids, I took it seriously,” Court said.

She said that early in her term, “it never occurred to me these things happen. ... As a trial court judge, I do my best to get it right.”

Now she had to have hard talks with her young children about very real dangers, amplified one Saturday morning when she looked out her window to find sheriff’s deputies handcuffing four people on her driveway.

“We’ve had many other experiences with respect to threats, some of which we’ve shared with our children, and some which we didn’t,” she said. “My husband and I are just being very vigilant and making sure that we maintain a perimeter of safety around our family, but it’s really hard.”

Committed to law, not politics

Court said she doesn’t believe people realize that federal judges focus solely on the law and legal documents. They think judges act out of allegiance to the president who nominated them.

“That’s a very dangerous place to be because it’s very unpredictable. It’s not tethered to the case and it’s very difficult to defend against,” said the Biden appointee.

She said some of the threats even come from those with law licenses.

“I have seen veiled threats in pleadings filed by lawyers,” she said. “I’m not sure where this is coming from, it’s definitely upticking in the last five years.”

Social media a big culprit

As head of the bench in California’s Los Angeles-based Central District, Judge Gee was appointed by former President Barrack Obama and is the first Chinese-American woman nominated by a president and confirmed by the Senate to a lifetime judicial term.

She said the rise of social media and the internet has been an accelerant to the threats.

Many of those threats have been leveled against Judge Reyes, who blocked the Trump administration from ending the protected status of 350,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States. Reyes, a native of Uruguay who is openly gay, graduated with honors from Harvard and was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Many of the attacks have been about Reyes’ sexual orientation and her immigrant origins. She has read some of the messages in open court and did so again at Thursday’s forum.

“I hope you lose your life by lunchtime, you worthless whore,” said one missive. “I hope you die today. Enjoy choking on your tongue, you filthy four-legged beast.”

Another urged her to kill herself: “The best way you could help America is to eat a bullet. I pray you do the right thing. ... And you and all the other pieces of s--- Democrat judges, like I said, save America and bite down on that slug.”

‘Threats are extraordinary’

Reyes said the threats to the judiciary have become almost an everyday occurrence. And that’s worrisome.

“These threats are extraordinary … but what is most problematic is that the extraordinary has become ordinary,” she said. “It’s just a matter of course now that when you issue an opinion that some people don’t like, you’re going to get threats and you’re going to get death threats.”

She said the most hurtful of the threats are the ones accusing her of being un-American, an immigrant who should go back to her own country because “you don’t understand what it means to be an American.”

“I think every federal judge has a deep and abiding sense of what it means to be an American, of our constitutional system, and we’re doing this job because we love doing that, we love that system,” Reyes said.

Trump appointee Norris said the judges wear the robes out of a sense of duty, not desire.

That’s a lost point to the people who sent him pizzas — for three days in a row — in the name of Daniel Anderl, the 20-year-old son of federal judge Esther Salas in New Jersey. Anderl was gunned down in 2020 at his mother’s home by a shooter masquerading as a deliveryman.

The threats didn’t stop there. Norris also was threatened by a criminal defendant that he had ruled against and sentenced, according to news reports.

“You’re gonna die, too, judge,” the defendant said. “It ain’t no threat, it’s a promise.”

And Norris’ clerk was shot during a residential break-in, according to Bloomberg, while the judge was overseeing the trial of police officers who fatally beat a Black man named Tyre Nichols in 2023.

Norris said the threats are “weird, but it’s no longer unusual.”

“We’re not alone,” he said. “Any number of public servants now, be they federal judges, appointed judges, elected officials, law enforcement, even those in the press, receive threats of various kinds and, unfortunately, it’s sort of become the order of the day.”

Better education needed

So what’s the solution? Education, say the judges. They have to do a better job of teaching the public about what they do and why.

“A lot of the blowback on social media, a lot of the threats come from fear and misunderstanding,” Reyes said.

Added Gee: “The judiciary, unlike the other two branches, we’ve taken an oath of impartiality. So even if you don’t have a case in court, our decisions will often impact not just local communities, but sometimes the entire state and, at times, the entire nation.”

Norris said the judiciary has to reach out to the public with simpler language, which he called a “heavy lift.”

“Sometimes we talk in rather lofty terms about civilized behavior ourselves, I hope, as guardians of the Constitution. But we’ve got to translate that into words that people understand these days.”

And, the judges said, part of the answer is to forge ahead, the best they can.

“We will continue to do our jobs,” Reyes said. “And we will look at the cases in front of us, notwithstanding the noise.”

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