Trump Administration Sued Over Removing Stonewall Pride Flag

The Trump administration has been sued over removing the Pride flag from the historic Stonewall National Monument in New York City this month.

A lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court by a group of nonprofits, argues that the move violated a federal law permitting other flags on National Park Service (NPS) sites that provide historical context to national monuments — including Confederate flags.

“This was no careless mistake,” said the suit, which is being led by a foundation honoring Gilbert Baker, the artist who created the rainbow Pride flag in the late 1970s.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, adds that the administration “has not removed other historical flags at other national monuments, most notably Confederate flags,” and says the “capricious action” violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

It goes on: “Meanwhile, the assault on Stonewall is the latest example in a long line of efforts by the Trump Administration to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and opprobrium.”

The Stonewall National Monument honors the Manhattan gay bar, The Stonewall Inn, where the community fought back against a New York Police Department raid in 1969. The uprising is considered a turning point for LGBTQ+ rights.

In early February, the iconic multicolored flag, which includes colors representing the transgender community, was quietly removed from a flagpole on the NPS-run site, which sits in a tiny park in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

The NPS justified the decision by citing a Department of Interior (DOI) directive, issued last month, and stating that “only the U.S. flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags are flown on NPS-managed flagpoles, with limited exceptions.”

But the lawsuit says NPS and DOI polices “require no such thing.”

“In fact, the opposite is true,” the complaint reads. “The policies the government says require removing the Pride flag 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 historical context exception is what allows Confederate flags to be flown at NPS-managed properties, such as the Gettysburg National Military Park, the suit contends.

The filing adds that the move squares with the Trump administration’s “wider campaign to demean and erase the transgender community,” pointing out the word “transgender” has been recently removed from sections of the Stonewall monument’s website.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department responded to HuffPost’s request for comment with partisan criticism that did not address the suit’s claims. Instead, the spokesperson lingered on the extreme cold weather that affected New York City’s operations in recent weeks, and criticized the city’s Democratic mayor, Zohran Mamdani, along with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D).

“Hundreds of families in New York City went without power during this year’s severe cold weather, people are being found dead on the streets, and trash has piled up so high it towers over city residents,” the spokesperson said. “This is Mayor Mamdani, Senator Schumer and the congressional delegation’s New York City.”

“It would be a better use of their time to get the trash buildup off city streets, ensure there are no more avoidable deaths, and work to keep the power on for the people of New York City,” the spokesperson went on. “This political pageantry shows how utterly incompetent and misaligned the New York City officials and New York’s congressional representatives are with the problems their city is facing.”

Charles Beal, the president of the Gilbert Baker Foundation, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said the Pride flag is “recognized globally as a symbol of hope and liberation for the LGBTQ+ community whose efforts and resistance define this monument.”

“Removing it would, in fact, erase its history and the voices Stonewall honors,” added Beal.

Hundreds of New Yorkers protested the flag’s removal and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history.”

New York City officials raised the flag again late last week, but it is at risk of being taken down once more.

HuffPost has contacted the National Park Service for comment.