A librarian for most of her life, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito has faced national scrutiny over a land deal and the flags flown outside her homes.
Martha Bomgardner is a former law librarian and the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. She met him in a courthouse library, married him in 1985, and spent the next several decades raising their two children, well clear of the political fights that followed his career.
Between 2023 and 2024, three separate reports put her name in the headlines. The Intercept revealed an oil and gas lease she had signed on land she inherited in Oklahoma. The New York Times reported on two flags flown outside the family’s homes. And a documentary filmmaker released audio of her, recorded without her knowledge. Each one turned a private choice of hers into a question about whether her husband could rule without bias.
| Key facts | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Martha Ann Bomgardner Alito |
| Born | Fort Knox, Kentucky |
| Education | University of Kentucky (B.A. 1976, M.A. 1977) |
| Former career | Law librarian |
| Spouse | Justice Samuel Alito (married 1985) |
| Children | Philip and Laura |
| Home | Virginia |
Table of Contents
From Fort Knox to the Justice Department
Martha Bomgardner was born at Fort Knox, Kentucky, into an Air Force family. Her father’s postings moved the family to the Azores, Texas, France, Maine, and New Jersey while she was growing up, according to the University of Kentucky, her alma mater.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature there in 1976 and a master’s in library science the next year. She worked at a public library in New Jersey, then at the US Attorney’s office in Newark, and later at the Justice Department. She met Samuel Alito in a law library while he was an assistant US attorney. They married in 1985 and raised Philip and Laura in New Jersey before moving to the Washington area in 2006, when President George W. Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court.
She left library work to raise her children. In 2010 she returned to her old campus in Lexington to give a talk called “One Letter Home,” about how her family changed after the move to Washington. Her husband sat in the audience.
An oil and gas lease in Oklahoma
In June 2022, Bomgardner signed a lease that gave an energy company the right to drill on land she had inherited from her father in Grady County, Oklahoma. The Intercept reported the terms in 2023, working from the lease filed with the county clerk.
- The plot covered about 160 acres, left to her by her father, Bobby Gene Bomgardner.
- The lease went to Citizen Energy III, one of Oklahoma’s larger oil and gas producers.
- If the land produced, the company would pay her 3/16 of the money it made from oil and gas sales.
- A line in Justice Alito’s financial disclosure, marked “mineral interests,” had been valued at between $100,001 and $250,000.
Citizen Energy III had no case before the Supreme Court, so the deal posed no direct conflict. It still drew attention, because Alito had taken part in rulings that favored the oil and gas industry, among them the decision that limited the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Two flags and calls for recusal
Two flags flown at the family’s homes brought the widest coverage.
- In January 2021, an American flag flew upside down outside the couple’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, less than two weeks after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Supporters of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen had taken up the inverted flag.
- In the summer of 2023, an “Appeal to Heaven” flag flew at the family’s vacation house on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. Some January 6 rioters had carried that banner, which is tied to Christian nationalist groups.
The New York Times reported both flags in May 2024. Alito said he had no part in raising either one, and that his wife had put up the Virginia flag after a neighbor used insulting language on yard signs.
The Washington Post later said it had learned about the inverted flag in 2021 but chose not to publish at the time. When a Post reporter came to the house that January, Bomgardner told him it was “an international signal of distress” and told him to leave her property.
Senator Dick Durbin, then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the second flag showed the incidents were not isolated. Democratic lawmakers asked Alito to step aside from cases involving Donald Trump and the January 6 prosecutions. He refused.
What the hidden recording captured
In June 2024, Bomgardner returned to the news through her own words. Documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor went to the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, posing as a conservative donor, and recorded the justice’s wife without telling her.
Bomgardner complained about a Pride flag she could see near one of the couple’s homes. She said she wanted a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag in answer to it, because she had to look across a lagoon at the rainbow flag for a month. In a second recording, she spoke about getting back at the people who had criticized her over the flags.
“You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you. There will be a way. It doesn’t have to be now, but there will be a way.”
Representative Mark Pocan, then the chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and the Human Rights Campaign criticized her comments, saying they raised doubts about Justice Alito’s fairness in cases that affect LGBTQ Americans.
Bomgardner also described a flag she was saving for later. Once her husband leaves the Supreme Court, she said, she would fly a banner of her own design carrying one Italian word, vergogna, which means shame. He has not left. In April 2026, people close to Alito said he intended to keep serving on the court into at least 2027.
