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A federal appeals court has paved the way for the Trump administration to replace the slavery exhibit it removed at the President’s House Site on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.
Thursday’s decision effectively discards a February injunction ordering the National Park Service to restore the site, which included a series of illustrated panels about the nine people enslaved by George Washington at the executive mansion while he was president in the 1790s.
The panels were taken down, then partially restored, as part of a monthslong legal fight rooted in an executive order issued by President Donald Trump. Citing a 2006 agreement, the city sued the Park Service and the Interior Department in January after it abruptly removed the exhibit to comply with the order.
In its unanimous ruling, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found that the city does not have any “statutory, property, or contractual rights that empower it to curate the exhibits in the President’s House.” The judges also concluded that the Trump administration’s replacement panels, which NPS has posted online, 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. 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,” wrote Judge Thomas Hardiman, who authored the appellate court’s opinion.