Court clears Trump administration panels at Washington slavery site
A federal appeals court allowed new exhibits at Philadelphia’s President’s House Site while the city seeks to keep them off display.
By Maya Lindqvist · Senior Technology Correspondent
3 min read
A federal appeals court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to reinstall new interpretive panels at Philadelphia’s President’s House Site, where George Washington lived while the city served as the nation’s capital. The dispute matters because the exhibit sits near Independence Hall and tells visitors how slavery was part of the early presidency.
The Associated Press reported that a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for the National Park Service to put the replacement panels back up. A message seeking comment from the Park Service was left Friday, according to AP.
The President’s House Site is part of Independence National Historical Park and stands near the area where the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776, AP reported. The earlier display, installed in 2010, described how nine enslaved people lived in the household with George and Martha Washington during the 1790s.
The Trump administration’s changes followed a 2025 executive order directing federally owned or controlled historic sites not to present information that would “disparage Americans past or living” and to emphasize the “greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people,” according to AP.
Friday’s order was procedural, AP reported. It allowed the government to carry out a ruling issued last month by a 3rd Circuit panel that found a lower court had erred when it required the federal government to remove the newer panels.
AP reported that the panel that issued last month’s decision included one judge nominated by President Donald Trump, one nominated by former President George W. Bush and one nominated by former President Barack Obama. The 3rd Circuit is based in a courthouse across an intersection from the historic site.
In a Thursday court request, the administration said the panels were ready and should be installed “without further delay,” according to AP. The government has said in court filings that the new material also addresses slavery.
A National Park Service website showing the replacement panels indicates they still cover enslaved people who lived in the house, the abolitionist movement, slavery’s treatment under the Constitution, the end of slavery in Pennsylvania, the views and conduct of Washington and John Adams on slavery, and the 20th-century civil rights movement, AP reported.
Critics, academics and officials have said for months that a display shaped by Trump’s order could soften the brutality of slavery and present a more celebratory version of American history, according to AP. The replacement panels omit some material from the prior exhibit, including a map of slave-trade routes and a timeline on slavery, and they drop critical headings such as “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” AP reported.
Philadelphia, which sued over the removal of the earlier material, asked the appeals court Friday to recall its order, at least long enough for the city to respond to the administration’s Thursday request, according to AP. In its filing, the city said it would be harmed if the panels were reinstalled, calling the President’s House a site of “exceptional importance” developed through years of federal-local work to tell a long-suppressed story.
About half of the previous panels had been reinstalled earlier this year before a court ordered that work to stop, AP reported.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.