Trump Administration Sued For Removing Pride Flag From Stonewall
The lawsuit asserts that Trump’s removal of the flag violated laws that permit flags to be flown that provide historical context.
Featured Image: NYC officials re-raise the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village on Feb. 12, 2026 (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/ AFP via Getty Images)
On Tuesday, Feb. 17, several non-profits filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for removing the Pride rainbow flag last week from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. The lawsuit asserts that the move violated federal laws that allow flags to be flown if they provide historical context, and seeks to return the original Pride flag to it’s rightful spot at Stonewall, in Greenwich Village.
The site marks the location of the historic 1969 Stonewall uprising, and was designated as a national monument under the Obama Administration in 2016.
The suit is being led by the Gilbert Baker Foundation, named after the artist who created the rainbow Pride flag in 1978. It is joined by activist Charles Beal, Village Preservation, EQNY Fund, Inc.d/b/a Equality New York. The organizations are specifically suing the U.S. Department of Interior and Doug Burgum, The National Park Service and Jessica Bowman, and Amy Sebring, as Superintendent of Manhattan Sites. The lawsuit reads:
“The Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village, New York City, is the first national monument in the United States dedicated to the LGBTQ+ rights movement. It commemorates the historic uprising that occurred in the same location a half-century ago following an infamous police raid on the Stonewall Inn, an underground gay bar at the time. That incident is widely considered to be the birth of the LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States.”
Related: Trump Administration Removes A Rainbow Flag From Stonewall National Monument
The lawsuit explains that in 2022, after extensive advocacy by the LGBTQ+ community, the National Park Service (“NPS”) installed a flagpole inside the Stonewall National Monument to fly a Pride flag, which has been and remains a widely recognized symbol of LGBTQ+ equality since the 1970’s. The NPS notes this watershed event—the first Pride flag flown permanently on federal lands—by pointing to “the significance of the rainbow flag to Stonewall National Monument and the community” and NPS’s commitment “to telling the complex and diverse histories of all Americans.”
(Instagram photos by Abbie Thompson)
Sometime around the night of Feb. 8th, the official NPS-sanctioned flag at Stonewall was abruptly taken down. Employees at the historic Stonewall Inn noticed its absence the next morning. Protests erupted in the days that followed. A Pride flag was raised again on Thursday, Feb. 12, hoisted up by public officials and community members who joined together in defiance, unwavering joy and a refusal to capitulate to intimidation.
As the lawsuit points out, the government has claimed that it was necessary to remove the flag in order to comply with NPS and Department of Interior (DOI) policies that purportedly prohibit the flying of anything but the United States flag, DOI flags, and the POW/MIA flags in national parks. But the lawsuit argues that the NPS and DOI policies do not actually require this, and that In fact, those very policies “expressly permit the NPS to fly other flags that provide historical context to national monuments—which is precisely what the NPS official Pride flag did at Stonewall for many years.”
The lawsuit also notes that the Trump administration has not removed other flags that provide historical context, such as Confederate flags. It notes that the removal of the Pride flag is just one of a string of actions targeting the LGBTQ community, pointing to other assaults, such as: removing the word “transgender” from sections of the Stonewall monument’s website in February 2025; banning the use of pronouns in email signatures; and scrubbing the name of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk from the U.S. Navy ship named in his honor.
Related: National Park Service Quietly Edits Out Bisexuals From Stonewall Page
“This case concerns one flag. But it is about so much more,” the lawsuit states. “The Pride flag symbolizes the dignity and respect for which members of LGBTQ+ community have so long fought and so rightfully deserve. Its colors reflect the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender.”
Image: Stacy Lentz and LGBTQ+ community gather in protest, following the Trump Administration’s removal of Gilbert Baker’s original Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument (Photo by Abbie Thompson)
