U.S. judge upholds Friday deadline to restore slavery exhibit on Independence Mall in Philadelphia

Attorney and founder of Avenging the Ancestors Coalition Michael Coard speaks during a rally celebrating the reinstallation of a slavery exhibit at the President's House Site in Philadelphia on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Joe Lamberti)

PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge has denied the Trump administration’s request to delay a Friday deadline to restore an exhibit on the history of slavery at Independence Mall in Philadelphia.

The ruling Friday morning came as restoration work begun Thursday resumed at the site of the former President’s House. Senior U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe had set a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for its completion, and she held to that timeline, even as the administration appeals her decision.

The Interior Department has said in court papers that it planned to replace the exhibit with its own narrative on slavery, as the administration works to remove information that it deems “disparaging” to Americans from federal properties. Rufe said it must work with the city on new material under a longstanding co-operative agreement.

“As this court established, “(t)he government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it so pleases, but it cannot do so to the President’s House until it follows the law and consults with the city,” Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, said in Friday’s opinion.

In its own filing Friday to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department called her ruling “extraordinary” and “an improper intrusion on the workings of a co-equal branch of government.”

The appeals court asked the city to respond to the request for an emergency stay of Rufe’s order.

One of the panels being rehung Friday morning — titled “History Lost & Found” — details the surprising discovery of artifacts from the building during an archaeological dig in the early 2000s, as work was being done on a new pavilion for the Liberty Bell.

National Park Service employees worked with care on the exhibits, including those on the nine people enslaved by George and Martha Washington in the 1790s, when Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital. The Park Service describes the outdoor exhibit as one “that examines the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation.”

The Trump administration abruptly removed the panels in January, leading the city and other advocates to file suit. They had been on display since 2010, the result of years of research and collaboration between the city, the Park Service, historians and other private parties.

Rufe, in denying the federal government’s request for a delay, said that side was unlikely to succeed at trial. And she said the public –- and the city’s reputation -- was being harmed with each passing day.

The city, she said, “is responsible for the public trust in the city’s telling of its own history, its own integrity in telling that history, and preventing erasure of that history, particularly in advance of the semiquincentennial.”

Millions of people are expected to visit Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, this year for the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding in 1776.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, which is representing the administration in court, declined to comment on the restoration work Friday.

Kimberly Gegner, a teacher from Philadelphia, visited the site Friday with some of her 6th- to 9th-grade students. As a Black American, she said, it had pained her to see the history removed. But she was grateful to see it going back up.

“This whole case and what happened here — the taking it down and how Mayor Parker and other Pennsylvanians had to go to court to have it restored — is an excellent case of how the Constitution was applied to win this case for Philadelphia,” she said.

Tassanee Vejpongsa And Maryclaire Dale, The Associated Press