Originally published July 7 ┃Updated July 10
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The City of Philadelphia has lost its last-ditch effort to preserve the slavery exhibit at the President’s House on Independence Mall.
On Friday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied the city’s request to recall a mandate issued last week, allowing the National Park Service to switch out display materials at the site.
The Trump administration has proposed new materials that shift the focus away from the people that George Washington kept enslaved in the house and minimize mentions of slavery.
The court said the new materials can be installed at any time.
The Interior Department has not responded to requests for a timeline.
On Tuesday, the city asked the federal appeals court to recall its ruling that the Trump administration can replace displays at the President’s House slavery exhibit as soon as it wishes.
The court granted a government request for a “mandate” allowing immediate installation of the new materials on July 3, a federal holiday and just one day after the government’s request, before the city had a chance to respond.
In a filing on Tuesday, the city argued the swift action was inconsistent with the federal rule for appellate procedure, which gives the city 10 days to respond to the government’s request and 45 days to request a rehearing.
“The city will be irreparably harmed if the Government changes the President’s House panels before the ordinary period for seeking rehearing expires,” the city argued.
“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. Once the Government removes or replaces the interpretive materials, the city and the public will lose the benefit of the existing, historically-grounded interpretation... That harm cannot be adequately remedied after the fact.”
The city called the issuance of the mandate “procedurally flawed and substantively objectionable.”
Given the court’s previous rulings, it seemed unlikely to grant the city’s request. The National Park Service was free to swap out exhibit materials at any time.
The exhibit is currently halfway dismantled. The NPS removed most of the exhibit in January, following a Trump administration executive order that national park exhibits should not disparage the Founding Fathers. The President’s House, on the site of the home where George Washington lived when Philadelphia was the capital, focuses on the nine people he kept enslaved there.
A federal judge ordered the restoration of the exhibit, but the work was only halfway done when the Third Circuit halted that order, ultimately clearing the way for the exhibit materials to be removed again and replaced.
