In the days after a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt presidential election results on Jan. 6, 2021, an upside-down American flag — a "Stop the Steal" symbol embraced by the rioters — flew outside the Virginia home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the New York Times reported Thursday.
The flag at Alito's home in Alexandria was photographed by neighbors and obtained by the New York Times.
At the time, the high court was considering cases involving the 2020 election between Joe Biden and Trump.
The court is currently considering whether the former president should be immune from prosecution, an argument that has sidelined the federal trial against him stemming from his actions on Jan. 6.
Alito blamed his wife.
"I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag," Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to the New York Times. "It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs." He did not detail the language.
Judicial experts told the newspaper that the flying of the upside down flag was a blatant violation of ethics rules because it was expressing a political opinion.
"It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn't have it in his yard as his message to the world," Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia, told the Times.
This is the "equivalent of putting a 'Stop the Steal' sign in your yard, which is a problem if you're deciding election-related cases," she said.
The court has advised its employees about public displays of partisan viewpoints, and court ethics demands that judges remain independent and steer clear from making statements or opinions about matters that could come before the court.
"You always want to be proactive about the appearance of impartiality," Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge and the director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, told the newspaper. "The best practice would be to make sure that nothing like that is in front of your house."
