A federal judge in Philadelphia hammered Trump administration lawyers Friday, questioning the National Park Service’s abrupt removal of an exhibit on slavery last week from Independence National Historical Park.
Judge Cynthia Rufe, with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, has yet to rule on Philadelphia’s request that the court reinstate the exhibit, which served as a memorial to the lives of enslaved Black people whom George Washington brought to Philadelphia while he served as president.
But Rufe pressed the federal government’s lawyers to give a justification for the removals, saying it was a dangerous precedent to allow the whims of the White House to change historical records.
In its first detailed defense on removal, Justice Department lawyer Gregory Byron in den Berken argued Friday that NPS acted within its authority to control what exhibits are installed at park sites and cited President Donald Trump’s executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which told federal agencies they needed to expunge “revisionist” history from federal properties.
“Reasonable minds can differ as to what needs to be displayed, what needs to be shown, how it needs to be shown. Ultimately, it is the National Park Service and federal government’s choice,” den Berken said.
He added later: “The government gets to choose the message it wants to convey.”
Rufe, a senior judge appointed by former President George W. Bush, interrupted the lawyer calling that a “dangerous statement to make.”
“That is horrifying to listen to,” she said. “No citizen should be subjected to that sort of whim.”
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker sued the Trump administration last week after the exhibit was torn down, saying NPS both broke federal law and violated an agreement with the city related to the site.
The judge told the city its claims lacked clarity, noting that some of the arguments made at the hearing were not in its filing documents. The city’s lawyers acknowledged that their original lawsuit was filed quickly.
Rufe indicated she would allow the city to amend its filings.
The judge requested that NPS not remove any more materials from the exhibit at the President’s House but said she would not order that at this time.
“I don’t like to have things escalate where they could be done professionally,” Rufe said.
The federal government’s lawyers said they believed it would be possible to comply with that request.
During the hearing, the DOJ lawyers stressed that the exhibit is not destroyed — the disputed panels are in storage — saying that shows that there is no irreparable harm to the city. The DOJ lawyers said Friday that ultimately the city is arguing a breach of contract and that the case should be heard in federal claims court.
The removals stem from an order by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last year that all national parks review their displays to comply with the president’s history order. The slavery exhibit in Philadelphia is the most prominent as the NPS has ramped up removals to comply with the Trump order.
Acting NPS Director Jessica Bowron on Jan. 22 personally directed the Philadelphia park to remove the signs, according to a declaration filed in court from Steven Sims, the long-standing superintendent of Independence National Historic Park. The removed panels are stored at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Footprints in the concrete and names of slaves owned by the Washington family on the memorial wall were not to be removed, Sims wrote in a declaration.
The slavery exhibit was built after collaboration between Philadelphia and the National Park Service on creating an exhibit on the foundation of a home where Washington lived during his presidency between 1790 and 1797, along with his family and a retinue of enslaved servants. At the time, Philadelphia was the capital of the new country.
During that period, Pennsylvania granted freedom to any enslaved person after six months of residence in the state. Washington evaded the abolition edict by rotating his slaves out of Pennsylvania. While living at the house, one of the enslaved women in Washington’s household, Ona Judge, escaped to freedom in New Hampshire.
The explanatory panels at the site described that history, while also exploring slavery more broadly. The President’s House is part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site under the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act.
The city argued Friday that NPS violated the Administrative Procedure Act in its sudden removal.
“The park service does not have carte blanche to interpret as they like,” said City Solicitor Renee Garcia. “To now destroy a commemorative site that took 10 years, millions of dollars and substantial collaboration without so much as a conversation is the very definition of an arbitrary and capricious action.”
Philadelphia and the National Park Service entered a cooperative agreement to develop the President’s House in 2006. The exhibit opened in 2010. Five years later, the city signed an agreement transferring the intellectual property rights of the exhibit to NPS. The city is arguing that the transference of rights did not include authority to “materially alter or destroy altogether the exhibit underlying the copyright.”
“Seventy-five years of collaboration went out the window,” Garcia said Friday.
Several former city employees testified Friday, describing the collaboration between NPS and the city in creating the exhibit over several years, work that included public comment and significant financial investments by Philadelphia.
The federal government did not call any witnesses.
Several briefs have been filed supporting Philadelphia’s claim, including from the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition — a citizens group that initially petitioned NPS and government officials to build a memorial to the people Washington held in slavery in Philadelphia.
In a brief supporting the restitution of the panels, Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration compared the removal of the slavery exhibit to the reinstatement of the statue of Albert Pike in the District of Columbia.
A confederate general during the Civil War, Pike’s status was torn down during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 over his support and reported involvement in the Ku Klux Klan.
The Trump administration restored the statue last year, citing Trump’s executive order on history.
“Without judicial intervention, the federal government will be permitted to selectively bury aspects of history that address slavery while celebrating individuals who fought to preserve slavery, all under the arbitrary implementation of the same rationale,” the governor’s brief said.
