Protesters calling themselves “kayak-tivists” formed flotillas outside Chief Justice John Roberts’ Maine vacation home this week, the latest move in a campaign Jonathan Turley says aims to demonize and gut the Supreme Court.
The demonstrators appeared at Roberts’ summer place on Hupper Island, faced the home from the water, held signs, and voiced their anger at the chief justice. Jonathan Turley reported the scene as part of a broader pattern of liberal activists descending on the private residences of conservative justices.
Roberts has already had to curtail his movement around the island. Protesting outside a Supreme Court justice’s home is a crime, though some have questioned whether those laws pass constitutional muster.
Turley, a Fox News Media contributor and Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, frames the kayak action as rage over reason. He argues organized protests at justices’ homes are meant to influence rulings and weaken public respect for the Court.
The protesters returned to Hupper Island in October and showed up again this week. Turley compared the pattern to migratory birds that reappear on schedule, only this flock targets a sitting chief justice at his family retreat.
The location is not a courthouse steps rally. It is a private vacation home in Maine where Roberts goes to unwind. Activists treated that fact as an invitation rather than a boundary.
Local writer Becca Shaw Glaser has pushed Mainers to confront Roberts whenever he steps out. In earlier writing she named everyday spots and urged harassment on sight.
Glaser wrote that Roberts is “one of the most powerful people in the entire world” who comes to Maine “to unwind and feel good about himself and his decisions” after rulings she opposed on abortion timing, environmental rules, guns, church and state, and money in politics.
"Exactly why should we continue to let Roberts use Maine as his easygoing backdrop for fun and relaxation? Why should Roberts get to breathe in the beautiful Maine air when he is fine with destroying methods of keeping our air clean?... Maine is not here as your happy place, your wind-down from all of your hard work destroying my civil liberties and democracy. No. May you never feel welcome here again."
She went further on street-level tactics.
"Should you see Chief Justice John Roberts duck into Squid Ink coffee or the Port Clyde General Store this summer, consider letting him know exactly what you think of him and his illegitimate, ultra-conservative court. Yell, boo, whisper, weep audibly, give him the thumbs down or the finger, hand him a note, refuse to serve him."
Glaser later lost her columnist role. During one of her protests last year, Roberts’ daughter Josephine approached her and sought to defend her father, a moment recounted in New York Times coverage that Turley cited.
Wendy Schlotterbeck, another Maine figure featured in that Times discussion, grew outraged after spotting Roberts celebrating the Fourth of July on the island. She left a picnic. The next day she joined the kayak-tivists outside his home.
Schlotterbeck has transgender relatives and immigrant friends who have been arrested. Turley notes she reacted after Court actions that narrowed protections for transgender athletes and minors and allowed an immigration enforcement effort to proceed. Her personal ties became the stated fuel for showing up at the chief justice’s doorstep by water.
The protests are not confined to Maine. Turley expects activists to return to the homes of justices around Washington as the term produces major decisions.
In June 2022, protesters outside Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s home left bloody dolls on the lawn. They knew young children were inside. That episode sits in the same campaign of residential pressure Turley describes.
Separately, an incident tied to Justice Brett Kavanaugh involved someone who sought to kill a member of the Court. Turley groups these events with the shouting, the home stakeouts, and now the kayak flotillas as a single climate of intimidation aimed at conservative justices.
Liberal justices have not faced the same residential siege in the material Turley presents. The focus stays on Roberts, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and the Court’s conservative majority.
Turley stresses that the Court still votes overwhelmingly on a unanimous or nearly unanimous basis in many cases. The conservative majority has ruled against the Trump administration when the law required it, including fights spanning tariffs to birthright citizenship. Roberts himself has drawn regular public criticism from Trump for those votes.
That record of independence does not satisfy the protesters. Their language treats adverse rulings as personal crimes that strip Roberts of any right to quiet in Maine. Glaser called the Court “illegitimate.” The kayak-tivists turned a family island into a stage set for signs and shouted displeasure.
Some on the left have pushed to pack the Court with an instant liberal majority. Turley contrasts that project with the actual voting pattern on the bench. The activists’ answer, in his account, is to take the fight to private lawns and quiet coves.
Back in 2022 Glaser was already telling Mainers to hound Roberts the moment he left his property. The kayak flotillas this week and in October show the advice took root. Everyday commerce, coffee shops and general stores, was listed as fair ground for yelling, booing, or refusing service.
Federal and local rules make it a crime to protest outside a Supreme Court justice’s home. Turley notes that some, including himself, have questioned the constitutionality of those restrictions. Even so, the legal line exists because residential targeting of judges carries obvious risks to safety, family life, and impartial decision-making.
Roberts has already limited how he moves around Hupper Island. Josephine felt compelled to confront a protester who was harassing her father. Barrett’s young children were home when bloody dolls appeared on the lawn. Those are not abstract costs. They are the daily price paid by the people who wear the robes and the families who live with them.
Turley is the author of the forthcoming book “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” due out February 3, 2026. His column treats the Maine flotillas as one more chapter in a politics that replaces argument with personal destruction.
The Court will keep hearing cases. Activists have already shown they will keep showing up at the waterline and the curb. The question is whether elected leaders, prosecutors, and citizens treat that residential pressure as legitimate dissent or as what it looks like on the ground: a coordinated effort to make conservative justices feel unsafe in their own homes.
Judges are not above criticism. Their homes and children are not campaign props. A republic that cannot tell the difference will not keep an independent Court for long.
