The Trump administration plans to appeal a federal judge’s order requiring that the National Park Service restore all the slavery-related exhibits it abruptly removed last month from the President’s House.

The Department of Interior and National Park Service said in a statement Tuesday that the agencies “disagree” with the court ruling and plans to appeal.

“The National Park Service routinely updates exhibits across the park system to ensure historical accuracy and completeness,” the statement said. “If not for this unnecessary judicial intervention, updated interpretive materials providing a fuller account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days.”

Neither agency responded to a request for more information on the plan for alternative panels. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe granted on Monday Philadelphia’s request for an injunction requiring the full restoration of exhibits removed from the President’s House on Jan. 22. She further enjoined the federal government from making any changes to the site without the agreement of the city.

» READ MORE: Federal judge orders Trump administration to restore slavery exhibits to the President’s House

The panels that tell the stories of the nine enslaved African people who lived in President George Washington’s house need to be displayed again swiftly, the judge said in her 40-page opinion.

The order directs the agencies to comply “immediately” and “forthwith,” but does not include a specific deadline.

“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,” Rufe wrote.

In addition to the appeal, the government will need to ask for a stay on the order. Otherwise it risks not complying with Rufe’s injunction.

But even as the panels haven’t been restored, the ruling marked a victory to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker‘s administration and the advocates who pushed to create the exhibit.

Parker addressed the injunction in a Tuesday video celebrating the ruling as a “huge win for the people of this city and our country.”

“This summer Philadelphia will lead a litany of Semiquincentennial celebrations in honor of America’s 250th birthday and please know that we will do so with a great deal of pride,” Parker said. “A pride that comes from acknowledging all of our history, and all of our truth, no matter how painful it may be.”

Philadelphia’s lawsuit is the first in the nation challenging the removal of exhibits from national parks in accordance with President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order, which instructed the Interior Department to remove any content or signage that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

The federal government violated a 2006 cooperative agreement between the National Park Service and the city when it dismantled the exhibits without notice in what amounts to an unlawful “arbitrary and capricious” act, Philadelphia’s lawsuit said. Rufe found that the agreement is still binding.

As the city’s litigation proceeds following the injunction, it isn’t the only effort to address changes to historic exhibits on federal parks.

A new lawsuit, filed Tuesday by park conservation advocacy groups in Massachusetts federal court, says that removals of the type that took place in Philadelphia violate “Congress’s clear instructions.”

The National Parks Conservation Association’s lawsuit notes that in addition to the slavery signs removed from the President’s House, the Trump administration removed signs about climate change from Maine’s Acadia National Park and a creative exhibit about the women’s role in the history of Muir Woods National Park, among other examples.

The suit asks a federal judge to order the Interior Department and National Park Service to “cease all unlawful efforts to remove up-to-date and accurate historical or scientific information from the national parks, and order that interpretive materials that have been removed pursuant to the unlawful Order be restored.”