Wisconsin judges reported 129 security threats over the past year, and Chief Justice Jill Karofsky says that number is proof the state's courts can no longer get by on resilience alone. In her annual State of the Judiciary address this week, Karofsky called on lawmakers to fund increased security across the state's courthouses and to take the mental-health toll on court employees seriously.
A Decades-Old Plea Gets Renewed Urgency
Karofsky, who serves as Wisconsin's chief justice, delivered the address on Wednesday, renewing a request the Wisconsin Supreme Court has made routinely since 2023, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. The state currently has 284 elected judges and justices spread across its circuit, appeals and supreme courts, and the 129 threats reported over the past year underscore how exposed those officials can be, the station reported.
“A judge who is afraid cannot decide a case without fear or favor,” Karofsky said, according to the same report. She added that judges should not have to be heroic simply to be safe, and said resilience is not a substitute for real security, staffing plans or budget allocations.
What the Budget Request Would Fund
Karofsky said the court's upcoming budget request would include money for permanent security staff, as well as funding to help counties purchase safety equipment and hire their own security personnel. That dovetails with reporting from wglr.com, which found the Wisconsin Supreme Court's proposed 2027–29 budget seeks roughly $3 million for courthouse security, including $1.5 million earmarked for a court security improvement grant program. The same proposal also calls for eight new circuit court branches and an additional judgeship on the District III Court of Appeals.
The push for dedicated security funding is not new, and it has not gone smoothly. A 2023 request from then-Chief Justice Annette Ziegler sought a Supreme Court security force following the 2022 murder of retired Juneau County Circuit Court Judge John Roemer at his home, Wisconsin Public Radio's earlier coverage noted. A follow-up proposal to create an Office of the Marshals of the Supreme Court, which would have cost about $1 million annually and employed 10 people including eight law enforcement officers with statewide jurisdiction, failed in a 4-12 vote last year, with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed, according to the station's reporting.
That same account found the number of credible, identified threats against judges climbed from 30 in 2022 to 46 in 2023 before dipping to 29 in 2024 — then 22 such incidents were logged in just the first three months of 2025 alone.
A Personal Story Behind the Policy Push
Karofsky also used her address to describe a 2023 encounter in which she came across a young woman showing signs of being drugged and trafficked while running. After Karofsky called police, the woman began to seize, and officers told Karofsky to hold the woman's head in place while they located naloxone. The woman survived, Karofsky said, and Justice Rebecca Bradley, who left the court recently, called afterward to tell her she believed Karofsky had saved someone's life that day.
Karofsky said experiences like that one illustrate why courtroom trauma can carry long-lasting mental-health effects, and why court workers need to be encouraged, not discouraged, from seeking help. “Asking for help is not a weakness. It is part of doing the job well,” she said, per Wisconsin Public Radio's report. She also pointed to long hours and declining resources, particularly in rural courtrooms, as factors that put lawyers and judges at risk of burnout, and she encouraged her judicial colleagues to work directly with legislators to advocate for the system's financial needs.
Broader Strain on Wisconsin's Court System
The security push comes amid wider warnings about how thin Wisconsin's court system is stretched. A recent judicial-workload study found the state needs roughly 30 additional judges and court commissioners statewide, according to wixx.com, which reported that Karofsky is urging lawmakers to approve eight new judgeships, including two for Brown County and one serving Shawano and Menominee counties.
Brown County illustrates the strain in concrete terms. The county has the state's largest deficit of judges and court commissioners, short nearly six officials, and logged 3,755 pending criminal cases in 2025, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported. County officials have estimated that supporting two additional circuit court judges there would cost an extra $222,814, covering sheriff's deputies, judicial assistants, court coordinators and one-time setup costs. Brown County Judge Tammy Jo Hock told the paper the judicial system received less than 2% of Wisconsin's 2025–27 state budget, and the newspaper's reporting also pointed to shortages in mental-health treatment for people awaiting trial as part of the system's broader inadequacies.
Whether this year's request fares better than the 2023 and 2025 attempts remains to be seen, but Karofsky's message was clear: court safety and the mental health of the people who work inside Wisconsin's courthouses are, in her telling, inseparable from the budget fight now underway in Madison.
