A U.S. appeals court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to halt work on a slavery exhibit at Philadelphia’s President’s House on Independence Mall, blocking implementation of a lower court order to restore it. The decision pauses a disputed effort to display information about slavery during the founding era as the city prepares for the nation’s 250th anniversary.
The exhibit examines the lives of nine enslaved people at the site under George Washington in the 1790s. The Trump administration removed it in January as part of an effort to remove what it considers ‘disparaging’ historical content from federal properties, a move a federal judge rejected as violating law and harming the public trust.
The Appeals Court’s Decision
U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman issued an order late Friday evening allowing the Trump administration to halt work on restoring a slavery exhibit at Philadelphia’s President’s House on Independence Mall. The decision blocked implementation of a lower court order that would have required full restoration by 5 p.m. that day.
Judge Hardiman’s order specified that the exhibit materials already reinstalled must remain in place and be preserved, but stopped short of requiring completion of the restoration work. The appeals court will now hear arguments in the dispute between the Trump administration and the city of Philadelphia. Judge Hardiman said the court would expedite the appeal, though he indicated the legal proceedings would continue for at least another month.
Years of Collaborative Research
The exhibit displays information about nine enslaved people who lived at the site during George Washington’s presidency in the 1790s, when Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital. According to the National Park Service, it “examines the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation.”
The exhibit has been publicly displayed since 2010, the product of more than a decade of collaborative research involving the city, the National Park Service, historians, and private partners. One panel, titled “History Lost & Found,” documents the discovery of artifacts from the President’s House during an archaeological excavation in the early 2000s.
The Removal and Court Challenge
The Trump administration removed the exhibit in January as part of an effort to remove what it deems “disparaging” information about Americans from federal properties. The removal prompted Philadelphia to file suit for its restoration.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe sided with the city, ordering the exhibit restored by Friday at 5 p.m. Judge Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, wrote that “the government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it so pleases, but it cannot do so to the President’s House until it follows the law and consults with the city.”
Judge Rufe said the federal government was unlikely to succeed at trial and that the public and the city’s reputation were being harmed with each passing day the exhibit remained down. She emphasized that Philadelphia “is responsible for the public trust in the city’s telling of its own history, its own integrity in telling that history, and preventing erasure of that history, particularly in advance of the semiquincentennial.”
The Justice Department responded by calling Judge Rufe’s ruling “extraordinary” and “an improper intrusion on the workings of a co-equal branch of government.” About half of the large exhibition panels were reinstalled Friday morning before Judge Hardiman’s order halted further work.
Public Response
On Friday morning, before the appeals court order took effect, Kimberly Gegner, a teacher from Philadelphia, visited the site with some of her 6th- to 9th-grade students. “As a Black American,” she said, “it had pained her to see the history removed. But she was grateful to see it going back up.”
Gegner highlighted the constitutional significance of the dispute. “This whole case and what happened here — the taking it down and how Mayor Parker and other Pennsylvanians had to go to court to have it restored — is an excellent case of how the Constitution was applied to win this case for Philadelphia,” she said.
The remaining panels are now preserved in their current state pending the appeals court’s decision. Philadelphia prepares for the 250th anniversary of American independence this year, when the city expects millions of visitors to the nation’s birthplace.