Police in Fairfax County, Virginia, received an unusual call on February 15, 2021. A young couple claimed they were harassed by the wife of a High Court judge.
“Someone in a position of authority needs to talk to her and make her stop,” said the 36-year-old man who filed the complaint, according to a recording of the phone call reviewed by The New York Times. The officer on the phone replied that there was little the police could do: shouting was not a crime.
The couple called after a series of encounters with Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, that had gone from awkward to ugly. That day, Emily Baden, whose boyfriend (now husband) contacted police, had exchanged accusations with Martha-Ann Alito, who lived down the street. In a recent interview, Baden admitted that he called her an obscene epithet.
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The clash between the wife of a conservative Supreme Court justice and the couple, who were in their 30s, liberal and proud of it, played out for months on a rural block in Alexandria. It was the kind of shouting match between private citizens, at the height of tensions surrounding the 2020 election, that could have happened in any mixed political community in America. But three years later, that neighborhood feud — which both sides say started over an anti-Donald Trump sign — has taken on much larger proportions.
The Times reported this month that Samuel Alito’s household flew an upside-down flag in January 2021, which had been adopted as a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” campaign. The judge, who did not participate in the controversial neighborhood exchanges, cited the dispute as the reason his wife raised the flag.
The conflict in the Virginia neighborhood does not explain why a second flag, linked to the Jan. 6 riot and to a Christian nationalist movement, later flew at the Alitos’ beach house in New Jersey. The justice department has not provided an explanation for that flag, which the Times reported last week.
Since these incidents came to light, Alito has come under intense scrutiny, with Democratic lawmakers and legal experts calling on him to recuse himself from any cases related to January 6. Ethics experts and former judges said a neighborhood dispute — or a spouse’s beliefs — do not justify violating the rule that judges must avoid any appearance of political opinion or bias on issues that could come before the court.
In the coming weeks, the court will rule on two key cases that will determine how responsible the Capitol rioters and Trump can be held for January 6 and the surrounding events. The decisions are expected to affect his chances of winning back the White House this fall.
Amid the controversy, Baden said she was surprised to find herself playing a central role in Samuel Alito’s story of a war of words, political signs and a flag. “I have never seen or heard of the inverted flag,” she said.
To better understand the clash, the Times interviewed Baden, her mother and her husband, as well as other neighbors, and reviewed the texts Baden and her husband sent to friends after the episodes. Samuel Alito, who did not respond to questions for this article, has offered his own explanation for what happened in recent weeks.
There are some differences: For example, the judge told Fox News that his wife raised the flag in response to Baden’s vulgar insult. However, a text message and the police call — confirmed by Fairfax County authorities — indicate the verbal abuse occurred on Feb. 15, weeks after the inverted flag was taken down.
Samuel Alito’s version of events was that the flag was “briefly placed by Ms. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of offensive and personally offensive language on yard signs,” he said in a statement to the Times. Martha-Ann Alito, 70, who has never sought a public role, has not spoken out about the controversy.
The judge later elaborated in an interview with Fox News, saying that a neighbor in the area had hung a vulgar anti-Trump sign in January 2021, near where children wait for the school bus. Martha-Ann Alito complained to the neighbor. “Things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Ms. Alito and blaming her for the January 6 attacks,” tweeted the Fox News reporter who interviewed the justice.
While the Alitos were taking a neighborhood walk, “words were exchanged between Mrs. Alito and a man at the house with the sign,” the network reported. The judge said the man “used vulgar language, including the C-word.” After that conversation: ‘Madam. Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside down,” the Fox reporter said.
But in the Baden family’s version, it was the judge’s wife who initiated the conflict. “Other than putting up a sign, we did not start or instigate any of these confrontations,” Baden said later.
During the bleak COVID summer of 2020, Baden, then a 35-year-old actor and restaurant server in New York, moved back to her mother’s house in Alexandria, where she ultimately stayed for a year. Her then boyfriend, who also grew up in the area, also returned. The couple adopted a pandemic puppy, took walks around the neighborhood — there was little else to do — and provided company for Emily’s retired mother. (Baden’s husband spoke only on condition of anonymity because his employer requires its employees to keep their political views private.)
The couple participated in Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, supporting Biden-Harris signs and cheering and dancing in the streets of the nation’s capital on the Saturday in November when the election was held. When they got home, they showed off a political sign they made from torn up Amazon boxes, reading “BYE DON” on one side and “Fuck Trump” on the other.
Baden’s mother, Barbara Baden, a 75-year-old former Public Broadcasting executive and longtime resident, said she was hesitant about the sign in her home because she feared it looked “tacky.” But she dropped it because she didn’t want to interfere with what she saw as the couple’s expression of political concerns. “They made the signs with good intentions,” she said.
Shortly after Christmas, when Emily Baden was in her front yard with her dog, an older woman came up to her and thanked her for taking away the sign, which had only fallen over. Baden realized the woman was Martha-Ann Alito. The sign was offensive, Alito said, both according to the justice report and from a text message from Baden to her boyfriend.
Baden told her the sign would remain, she recalled in the interview. The family was amazed: Although the Badens and the Alitos lived only a short distance apart, Barbara Baden could not remember ever communicating with the judge’s wife beyond a wave of neighborly communication. In the interview, Emily Baden could not remember if she had re-hung the signs.
Then came January 6. Shocked by the violence and the threat to democracy, the couple quickly placed new signs in their garden that read ‘Trump is a fascist’ and ‘You are complicit’. Emily Baden said in interviews that the second signal was not aimed at the Alitos, but at Republicans in general, especially those who did not condemn the attack on the Capitol.
Shortly afterwards, her mother took them down for safety reasons. “Look what these people can do,” she said in an interview, recalling her fears at the time about the mob that had stormed the Capitol. “I don’t want to mark my house.”
It’s not clear whether Martha-Ann Alito saw those signs, but the day after the Capitol riot, as the couple parked in front of their home, she pulled over in her car, they said. She stood there for a while, staring, remembering the couple, who texted their friends about the meeting.
On Jan. 17, the upside-down flag hung at the Alito household, according to a photo obtained by the Times. Neighbors say it had been going on for a few days. If the flag was intended as a message to Baden residents, whose homes don’t have a direct view of the Alito residence, they missed it, they said.
President Joe Biden’s inauguration three days later was attended by six Supreme Court justices. Samuel Alito and two others skipped it out of COVID concerns, a court spokesman said at the time. That day, Baden and her then-boyfriend decided to drive by Alito’s house. “There was a part of me that said, let’s see what’s going on,” Baden said.
Martha-Ann Alito happened to be standing outside. According to interviews with Baden and her husband, as well as messages they sent to friends at the time, Alito ran to their car and shouted something they didn’t understand. The couple continued driving, they said, and as they passed the Alito home again to exit the cul-de-sac, Alito appeared to spit in the direction of the vehicle.
The couple, still shaken by the riot at the Capitol, said the encounter left them feeling uncomfortable and outdone by the wife of someone so powerful.
The same day, a Washington Post reporter who had heard about the inverted flag arrived to ask about it. Martha-Ann Alito looked angry, shouted that the flag was a “signal of distress” and then shouted about a dispute with neighbors, according to an article published Saturday.
The conflict then seemed to cool down. But on Feb. 15, the couple was taking in trash cans when the Alitos, who appeared to be out for a walk, showed up. Martha-Ann Alito addressed the pair by name, used an expletive and called them “fascists,” the couple told the Times at the time and in text messages. Samuel Alito remained silent, they added. The Alitos began to walk away.
That’s when Emily Baden snapped, she said. She doesn’t remember her exact words, but remembers something like this: How dare you act like that. You’re bothering us with signs. You represent the highest court in the land. You should be ashamed.
Baden said she — and not her partner, as Samuel Alito recalled — used the lewd phrase. “I completely agree with that,” she said. A neighbor standing on the street who asked not to be identified because of the friction on the block said he heard her say the word too.
To document the incident, the Badens called the police shortly afterward — making no mention of the vulgar expression — and recorded the conversation.
“It is very difficult for us to get into a situation like this after it has already been resolved,” said the agent on the line, explaining that the issue did not warrant an immediate response. “Next time that happens, feel free to call us again and we’ll see if we can get there and see what’s going on.”
More than a year later, when Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion destroying the constitutional right to abortion, the bloc became the scene of vociferous protests against him and his wife. The younger couple had moved away, but during a home visit they joined in. (Then they held up signs that Alito may have been referring to and accused him of being a fascist and an insurrectionist.)
Barbara Baden was surprised when she received a Christmas card from the Alitos at the end of last year. She didn’t keep it, but she and her daughter remember a handwritten addition that read, “May you have peace.”
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