Far-right Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's property was flying an upside-down American flag — a known MAGA "Stop the Steal" symbol — right around the same time that the Supreme Court was deciding whether to take up a challenge to the 2020 election brought by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.
According to The New York Times, "The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed. President Donald J. Trump’s supporters, including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at the Capitol a little over a week before. Mr. Biden’s inauguration was three days away. Alarmed neighbors snapped photographs, some of which were recently obtained by The New York Times. Word of the flag filtered back to the court, people who worked there said in interviews. While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision."
Alito denies having put up the flag himself, saying that, “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” His wife was involved in a dispute with a neighbor over an anti-Trump sign in their yard.
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Nonetheless, "Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot" — including upcoming rulings from the Supreme Court on whether January 6 defendants can be charged with obstruction of Congress, and whether Trump himself has presidential immunity from prosecution for his role in the election plot.
“You always want to be proactive about the appearance of impartiality,” former federal judge Jeremy Fogel told The Times. “The best practice would be to make sure that nothing like that is in front of your house.”
Alito has emerged as one of the most hard partisans on the Supreme Court. In addition to being the architect of the ruling that reversed abortion rights around the country, he has often gone further than even his fellow right-wingers, including being in the minority in a 7-2 ruling by fellow right-winger Justice Clarence Thomas that reversed a Trump-stacked lower circuit court trying to gut consumer financial protections.
