Published on Feb. 16 | Last updated on Feb. 20
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Trump administration won its first court victory against the city Friday as a federal appeals judge overruled a district judge's injunction to restore the slavery exhibits at the President's House an hour before the restoration deadline.
The National Park Service said it disagreed with Judge Cynthia Rufe's President's Day ruling on an injunction request brought by the City of Philadelphia on Jan. 22. That was the day the NPS, without notice, took down displays that told the story of the Africans that George Washington held as slaves in the house at Sixth and Market streets during the early days of the United States.
Rufe found that the city had shown it was likely to win its argument that the removal was arbitrary and capricious, in violation of its 1950 agreement with the NPS that established Independence National Historical Park.
On Wednesday, Rufe said the NPS had until the end of the day Friday to restore the exhibit.
The National Park Service began restoring the exhibits on Thursday and said in a court filing that it moved to immediately comply with the Feb. 16 injunction to restore them. Before the pause was won through appeal, employees had reinstalled 16 of the 34 removed exhibits.
In its appeal, the Trump administration argued the city failed to show harm from the removal of the exhibits because it had other ways to show the history of slavery at the President's House. It also argued that the injunction to force restoration of the exhibits violated the government's right to free speech.
In response, the city expressed confusion about what the end goal was for the Trump administration in winning a stay of the restoration. It restated its support for restoring the exhibits.
The appeal is on an expedited track, but a hearing likely won't happen until May. No changes will be made to the site until then.
National Park Service workers reinstalled the slavery displays to the President's House at Independence Mall on Feb. 19, 2026.Conner Barkon/KYW Newsradio
In an emailed statement concerning its appeal, the NPS suggested the initial removal was part of a routine update.
"If not for this unnecessary judicial intervention," it stated, "updated interpretive materials providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days."
The exhibit, however, concerned slavery at the President's House, not Independence Hall, so it isn't clear if the NPS intended to change the location of the exhibit.
The statement came one day after Rufe issued a blistering, 40-page opinion that began with a paragraph from George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984."
"As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's '1984' now existed with its motto 'Ignorance is Strength,'" she wrote, "this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts… It does not."
She wrote that the only rationale given for the sudden removal was an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last March that instructed the Interior Department secretary to ensure that federal property does not contain "content that inappropriately disparages Americans past or living."
However, Rufe wrote, "that action violates the expressed intention of the same EO the government claims motivated it. EO 14253 seeks to prevent revisionist attempts to 'replace objective facts with a distorted narrative.' NPS's action did the opposite, by dismantling objective historical truths."
Rufe also disputed the argument that the EO could grant the power to remove the slavery exhibit.
"The government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control," she wrote. "Its claims in this regard echo Big Brother's domain in Orwell's 1984… The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power."
Rufe Order 0216 by Kristina Koppeser
Rufe also found that the city and advocates who filed amici briefs in the case showed that irreparable harm was caused by the continued absence of the exhibit.
"Each person who visits the President's House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery receives a false account of this country's history," she wrote.
The judge's ruling came as the leading force behind the exhibit, the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, held its annual rally at the site.
"I'm ecstatic. What we had hoped for, the best we could hope for, we got," said attorney Michael Coard.
Mayor Cherelle Parker, in a social media post, celebrated Monday's legal win. "This is a huge win for the people of this city and our country," she said. "As mayor of Philadelphia and a student of history, please know that I am grateful for the judge's decision."
The judge's order included a provision that NPS could not make any other changes at the site and cannot damage any of the materials that were removed.
It not only ordered that the slavery exhibit be restored to the condition it was in on Jan. 21, but required that NPS must provide immediate, continued and proper maintenance to the site and keep it clean and accessible, cleared of snow, ice and any other impediment.
Rufe wrote that her order does not infringe on the government's right to send "whatever message it wants to send by wiping away the history of the greatest Founding Father's management of persons he held in bondage. President Washington's house would not merit designation as a historic site if he had not commanded the army that won the Revolutionary War, whose presence presiding over the Constitutional Convention graced it with the gravitas and spirit necessary to the creation of our government's foundational document, and his restraint and modesty radiated strength and wisdom that defines the ideal chief executive to this day. The government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it so pleases, but it cannot do so to the President's House until it follows the law and consults with the City."
