Federal appeals court rules Interior can remove, replace Philadelphia slavery exhibits

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A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can remove and replace a slavery exhibit at the site of the nation’s first executive residence in Philadelphia, reversing a lower court ruling that required the federal government to restore displays it had taken down earlier this year.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania blocked the Interior Department in February from damaging or altering items from the President’s House at Independence National Historical Park, ordering the administration to reinstall panels, displays and video exhibits that contained information about the nine individuals who were enslaved by George Washington.

But a three-judge panel for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals found that the district court had no authority because Philadelphia does not own the property in question and wiped its ruling.

“So the Court should not have considered the merits in its jurisdictional analysis,” Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote. “And while the Court was ultimately correct to conclude that the City has standing, it did so on an incorrect (and premature) understanding of the relevant statutory and contractual agreements.”

Hardiman is an appointee of former President George W. Bush. The others were Judge L. Felipe Restrepo, an Obama appointee, and Judge Peter Phipps, a Trump appointee.

“Trust in Trump,” an Interior Department spokesperson told The Hill in a statement. The city of Philadelphia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Philadelphia sued the Trump administration in January after slavery references were removed from the exhibit under an executive order that directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to purge “descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” from all public monuments, memorials and similar property.

Partially at issue was an agreement the City of Philadelphia made with the National Park Service (NPS) in 2006 to establish an exhibit that “illuminates the history” of the site where former Presidents Washington and John Adams lived and worked, including the enslaved Africans who were kept there. The agreement indicated that the federal government would be responsible for maintaining the site, which opened to the public in 2010.

The district court judge sided with the city in its argument that the federal government violated that contract when it amended the site’s displays without obtaining mutual consent, which the cooperative agreement and Congress had required.

Hardiman noted that the federal government stated during oral arguments in April that it had designed replacement panels and “stood ready to install them” if the temporary block lifted.

NPS later posted images of the “new exhibits” on Independence National Historical Park’s website, which Hardiman said are “full of historical context.”

“They highlight the momentous events that took place in the President’s House and the other sites at Independence National Historical Park,” he wrote. “They acknowledge the evil of slavery, including its injustices and hypocrisies, and, by telling the story of the nine slaves that Washington kept in the President’s House, remind us of their essential humanity.”

“Given all these developments, we cannot agree with the District Court that the exhibit removal six months ago was NPS’s last word on the matter,” Hardiman concluded.

Last week, A federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the administration to restore all displays and monuments it has removed from National Park sites over the past year as part of Trump’s executive order.

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