Alexandria, Va. — Scandal-plagued Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito once cut in line at the Alexandria, Va., Safeway, according to witnesses and staff who spoke to the Associated Press.
The revelation of the incident comes after the American flag was discovered to have briefly flown upside down on the justice’s property as a “stop the steal” symbol after the 2020 election.
Ethics experts say that the controversies call into question Alito’s political neutrality and commitment to the rule of law.
“This is an out-of-control-justice on an out-of-control Court,” said Chad Curtis of Accountability USA, a watchdog organization devoted to monitoring the courts. “Memo to Justice Alito: the rules apply to you.”
The latest incident took place back in March. According to witnesses, two or three people were in line waiting to use the self-checkout kiosks when Alito walked right past them carrying a grocery basket with a head of Boston lettuce, a carton of 2 percent milk, a loaf of Pepperidge Farm Hearty White Bread (24 ounces), a bag of underripe avocados, and one box of strawberry Pop-Tarts.
Melinda Carlisle, who was next in line, said she was traumatized by the incident, which brought home to her how the Supreme Court considers her a second-class citizen.
A visibility shaken Carlisle said, “It was hard to process that this could happen to me in my own community. My friends informally call that Safeway ‘the Considerate Safeway’ because everyone is so invariably kind and polite. To have that shattered in this way, it’s just, it’s just . . .”
She couldn’t continue, although Carlisle eventually added that this particularly hit home for her because she works as the litigation adviser to the ACLU project on the integrity of the courts.
Alito released a statement to the AP, reading, “Of course, I didn’t mean to cut in line at the Safeway. A number of the other patrons were bunched up and talking among one another, and I didn’t believe they were in line. When I heard some grumbling behind me after I checked myself out, I said, ‘Oh, excuse me. I didn’t realize.’ That’s the last I had thought of this alleged controversy.”
Ethics experts say that the statement raises more questions than it answers.
Another witness, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the highest court in the land, said, “‘Excuse me?’ That’s all we get? Clearly, this man thinks his underripe avocados are more important than ours.”
Possibly adding context to the incident, a store employee told the AP, “In fairness to the justice, it appeared he may have been distracted by following a Philadelphia Phillies Spring Training game on his phone.”
The AP cannot confirm this claim at this time.
Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, says he is determined to get to the bottom of the matter and his staff is investigating whether any of the other conservative justices may have cut in line at other retail outlets, including Target, Best Buy, and Home Depot, among others.
“We think this may be a standard Federalist Society practice that is only coming to light now,” said the senator. “Accountability is a bitch.”