Court says the US can install historical panels at the site of Washington’s Philadelphia home
Jul 3, 2026, 1:10 PM
FILE - Panels that were part of an exhibit on slavery at the President's House Site in Independence National Historical Park are reinstalled, Feb. 19, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti, File)
Credit: AP Photo/Joe Lamberti
(AP Photo/Joe Lamberti, File)
An appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration can reinstall its interpretive panels at the site of President George Washington’s home in Philadelphia.
The signs would be in the same area where the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. A National Park Service spokesperson did not immediately return messages asking when the panels could go up.
The new educational panels were designed to replace ones put up in 2010 that told the story of how nine slaves lived in the home along with George and Martha Washington in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.
Their removal grew from Trump’s 2025 executive order calling for for federally owned or controlled historic sites not to have information to “disparage Americans past or living” and to focus on the “greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
Friday’s ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit of Appeals, which is based in a courthouse across an intersection from the President’s House site, was a technical one to allow implementation of a ruling made last month.
That ruling, from the same judges — Trump and former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama each nominated one — said a lower court was wrong to force the federal government to take down its new panels.
The government asked Thursday for the go-ahead to put them back up, saying that the panels were ready to install and that they should go up “without further delay.” The administration has said in court filings that its information also discusses slavery.
The City of Philadelphia, which sued over removal of the previous information, is trying to put the brakes on the new installation. The city on Friday asked the appeals court to recall its order from earlier in the day — at least long enough to allow the city to respond to the request Trump’s administration made on Thursday.
Philadelphia said in its filing that it would be hurt if the new panels go back up: “The President’s House is a site of exceptional importance to Philadelphia and the Nation, developed through years of federal-local collaboration to tell a historically significant and long-suppressed story.”
About half the previous panels were reinstalled earlier this year before a court ordered that work to stop.
