Playing Flag Football at the Supremes

It’s now obvious that Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito has been playing flag football in his court.

Two flags associated with Donald Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ movement have been flown outside homes owned by Alito. And for the first flag, Alito punted the ball.

An upside-down American flag, which has come to be a symbol associated with Trump, was displayed outside Alito’s home in northern Virginia. A photo widely distributed this past week shows the flag flying on Jan. 17, 2021, just days after Trump’s insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Dozens of the pro-Trump rioters were carrying similarly inverted flags and chanting slogans like “Stop the Steal.”

And now a second flag of a type carried by those rioters was displayed outside Alito’s beach vacation home in New Jersey last summer. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag which is a white flag with a green pine tree was seen flying at the Alito beach home. Photos of the flag were taken on different dates in July and September 2023, though it wasn’t clear how long it was flying overall or how much time Alito spent there.

True to form for the game of flag football, Alito punted the ball to his wife, Martha-Ann, who Sam claimed “briefly placed” the upside down flag “in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs,” Alito said in a statement.

Martha-Ann Alito had supposedly been in a dispute with another family in the neighborhood over an anti-Trump sign on their lawn — plus, neighbors also interpreted the flag as a political statement. The yard sign purportedly said, simply, “Fuck Trump.”

Alito had acknowledged the presence of the flag at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, but said he had “no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag.”

He punted.

Supreme Court justice Sam Alito and Martha-Ann

There has been no response from Alito or Martha-Ann or the Supreme Court about the second flag, as of this writing.

News of the upside-down American flag sparked an uproar, including calls from high-ranking Democrats for Alito to recuse himself from cases related to former President Donald Trump.

Of course, this all raises concerns about Alito’s impartiality as the court considers two major cases related to the Capitol attack, including charges faced by the rioters and whether Trump has immunity from prosecution on election interference charges.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on Alito to recuse himself Friday from cases related to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. “Flying an upside-down American flag — a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement — clearly creates the appearance of bias,” Durbin said in a statement.

At the time the inverted flag was flying, the court was still considering whether to take up cases over the 2020 election.

The Associated Press reports:

Judicial ethics codes focus on the need for judges to be independent, avoiding political statements or opinions on matters they could be called on to decide. The Supreme Court had long gone without its own code of ethics, but it adopted one in November 2023 in the face of sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices. The code lacks a means of enforcement, however.

The Supreme Court has warned its employees about public displays indicating partisan leanings, the newspaper reported. The court did not respond to questions about whether those rules apply to justices.

The U.S. Flag Code states that the American flag is not to be flown upside down “except as a signal of dire distress in instance of extreme danger to life or property.” It has been used as a protest symbol on both the left [the Rag used it several times over the last few years mainly during Trump’s reign] and the right on a range of issues over the decades. It took off as a symbol of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign as he spread false claims that the election he lost to Biden had been stolen. AP

Just for context, I know something about flag football. I played it in college — with full pads — and was later awarded “Second Most Valuable Player” by my teammates. I also achieved broken skin on my nose from my helmet being pushed against my head numerous times, that the bump of skin never went away. Just like these concerns — that Alito doesn’t know how to play fairly.