One of Justice Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court opinions is making the rounds as controversy rages around an upside-down flag that was spotted flying over the Justice’s house in January of 2021.
Alitos wife, Martha-Ann Alito, raised the inverted flag outside her Alexandria, Virginia home during a time when the symbol was being used across the country to express solidarity with the “Stop the Steal” campaign, which held that Joe Biden’s 2020 Presidential election win was the result of chicanery and sought to get the results thrown out or overturned.
Despite this public display above his home, Justice Alito has refused requests to recuse himself from 2020 election-related cases, as well as cases related to the Capitol Riot of January 6, 2021. Critics (some of whom have also called for his impeachment) say they believe the Justice is too biased to render proper judgment in such cases, and sometimes point to the inverted flag which flew above his house to support their case.
One of the more prominent such requests came when Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin dispatched a letter to John Roberts, the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, requesting Alito’s recusal in the upcoming matter of Trump vs. United States.
Alito issued a letter on May 29 stating that a reasonable, non-politically motivated person would not consider the reasons sited in Durbin and Whitehouse’s letter to meet the legal standard for recusal. He reiterated his previous public stance, that the flying of the inverted flag in 2021 was an action undertaken by his wife—an action he himself was not even aware of until it was pointed out to him. Once he was aware, he asked his wife to pull the flag down, but she refued “for several days.
Alito further said that since he and his wife are joint owners of their Virginia home, she has the legal right to do what she wants with it, whether he likes it or not.
