Red Flag? Alito Scandal Casts Doubt On Supreme Court Impartiality

With less than six months to go before America chooses its next president, the US supreme court finds itself in an unenviable position: not only has it been drawn into a volatile election, but swirling ethical scandals have cast doubt on its impartiality.

- Ed Pilkington

The court's discomfort worsened dramatically last week when the New York Times published a photograph of an upside-down American flag being flown outside the Alexandria, Virginia, home of the hard-right justice Samuel Alito.

The photo was taken on 17 January 2021, days after the insurrection at the US Capitol and days before Joe Biden's inauguration.

At the time, upside-down flags were proliferating as a symbol of Donald Trump's false claim that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him. That one of the nine most powerful justices in the country had a "stop the steal" icon flapping on his front lawn was, to put it mildly, incendiary.

"There's little doubt that the supreme court will play a large role in the 2024 election, and you have to now ask whether the flag incident will forever cloud the public's view of its impartiality in those cases," said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group advocating reform.