A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration is permitted to put up new interpretive panels at the historic Philadelphia site where President George Washington once lived.
The location holds deep significance — it sits in the same area where the Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. A spokesperson for the National Park Service had not responded to questions about when the new panels would actually be installed.
The new displays are intended to replace a set of panels installed in 2010. Those original panels told the story of nine enslaved individuals who lived at the home alongside George and Martha Washington during the 1790s, a period when Philadelphia briefly served as the nation’s capital.
The push to remove those panels stems from a 2025 executive order signed by President Trump directing that federally owned or controlled historic sites should not contain information that would “disparage Americans past or living,” and should instead highlight the “greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
Friday’s ruling came from a three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit of Appeals — a court located just across an intersection from the President’s House site itself. The ruling was largely procedural, allowing a decision made last month to move forward.
That earlier ruling, issued by the same three judges — each nominated by a different president, including Trump, former President George W. Bush, and former President Barack Obama — found that a lower court had been wrong to order the federal government to remove its newly installed panels. The administration has maintained in court documents that its replacement panels also address the topic of slavery.
On Thursday, the government formally requested permission to proceed with reinstalling the panels, stating they were ready to go up and should be installed “without further delay.”
However, the City of Philadelphia, which originally filed a lawsuit over the removal of the earlier panels, is working to slow down the process. On Friday, the city asked the appeals court to pull back its earlier order — at least temporarily — so Philadelphia could have time to respond to the administration’s Thursday request.
In its court filing, the city argued it would suffer harm if the new panels go up, stating: “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.”
It’s worth noting that roughly half of the original panels had already been put back up earlier this year before a court stepped in and halted that effort.
