An appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration can reinstall interpretive panels that critics say whitewash the history of slavery 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 message seeking comment was left Friday with the National Park Service.
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 stemmed from Trump's 2025 executive order calling for federally owned or controlled historic sites not to display 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 — by one judge Trump nominated, one nominated by former President George W. Bush and one chosen by former President Barack Obama — 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.
Advocates, academics and officials have been concerned for months that the version that complies with Trump’s order could give a history that downplays the pain in the nation’s past in favor of a more triumphant view.
A government website with images of the new panels shows they would still have information on enslaved people who lived in the home, plus details on the abolitionist movement, how the Constitution treated slavery, the end of slavery in Pennsylvania and how Washington and his successor, John Adams, viewed and treated slavery, as well as information about the 20th century Civil Rights movement. The replacement panels do not include some of detail in the earlier ones, such as a map of slave trade routes and a timeline on slavery. They also avoid critical headlines such as “The Dirty Business of 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.
