Appeals court permits reinstatement of interpretive panels at Washington's Philadelphia residence
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
A U.S. 3rd Circuit panel ruled that the Trump administration may reinstall new educational panels at the President's House in Philadelphia, despite objections that they could downplay slavery history.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a technical ruling on Friday allowing the federal government to reinstall interpretive panels at the President's House historic site in Philadelphia. The panels, designed to replace those removed in 2025 under an executive order that barred display of information deemed to “disparage Americans past or living,” focus on the achievements of the nation while still addressing slavery.
The new panels, which are ready for installation, will continue to mention the nine enslaved individuals who lived with George and Martha Washington in the 1790s, as well as the abolitionist movement, constitutional treatment of slavery, the end of slavery in Pennsylvania, and the perspectives of Washington and John Adams. They also include references to the 20th-century civil-rights movement. However, they omit certain details from the earlier displays, such as a map of slave-trade routes, a slavery timeline, and a headline that previously read “The Dirty Business of Slavery.”
The city of Philadelphia, which sued over the removal of the original panels, asked the appeals court to pause the reinstatement so it can respond to the administration’s request. In a filing, the city argued that 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.”
The administration maintains that the revised panels comply with the executive order and include information about enslaved people, and it has urged the court to allow the panels to be installed “without further delay.” The ruling follows a prior district-court decision that had ordered the removal of the earlier panels, a decision that was later overturned by a panel of judges appointed by Presidents Trump, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.