High court marshal calls on Maryland, Virginia to enforce anti-picketing laws
RICHMOND, Va. — The marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court has asked Maryland and Virginia officials to enforce laws she says prohibit picketing outside the homes of the justices who live in the two states.
“For weeks on end, large groups of protesters chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed Justices’ homes,” Marshal Gail Curley wrote in the Friday letters to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and two local elected officials.
Curley wrote that Virginia and Maryland laws and a Montgomery County, Maryland, ordinance prohibit picketing at justices’ homes, and she asked the officials to direct police to enforce those provisions.
Justices’ homes have been the target of abortion rights protests since May, when a leaked draft opinion suggested the court was poised to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide.
The protests and threatening activities have “increased since May,” Curley wrote in a letter, and have continued since the court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was issued last week.
In her letter to Jeffrey McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, she said one recent protest outside an unspecified justice’s home involved dozens of people chanting, “no privacy for us, no peace for you!”
Curley’s request came about a month after a California man was found with a gun, knife and pepper spray near the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after telling police he was planning to kill the justice. The man, Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., has been charged with attempting to murder a justice of the United States and has pleaded not guilty.
The Justice Department, which, while providing U.S. marshals, has not taken steps to limit the protests as long as they are peaceful.