A rainbow Pride flag will fly once again at Stonewall two months after it was removed by the Trump administration.
The Pride flag at New York City’s Stonewall National Monument was installed by the National Park Service in 2022 after years of advocacy efforts and presidential administration changes. The agency took it down in February without warning, signalling another attempt to erase queer history and historic preservation policies for national monuments.
The removal of the Pride flag at Christopher Park was in response to Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at museums, parks and landmarks in the U.S. United States Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum later specified that “improper partisan ideology” would be subject to removal from federally controlled landmarks and other public spaces.
As part of the removal, federal officials cited a National Park Service policy that only allows for the U.S. flag, the Department of the Interior flag and the Prisoners of War flag to be flown in the public spaces maintained by the agency. But in its lawsuit challenging the flag’s removal, Lambda Legal and Washington Litigation Group argued that both agencies violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which notes exemptions for flags that provide historical context.
The court agreed that the Pride flag does fall within both the law and the National Park Service policy. As part of the settlement, the U.S. federal government agreed to rehang the Pride flag on the monument’s official flagpole and maintain it permanently.
“The government tried to erase an important symbol of the LGBTQ2S+ community, and the community said no,” Equality New York executive director Amanda Babine said in a statement. “Today’s accomplishment proves that when we stand together and fight back, we win.”
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