Federal ruling says no changes can be made to slavery exhibit at President’s House in Old City

A new federal ruling was issued on Thursday ordering that the government must keep the slavery exhibit at the President’s House as is.

The ruling was issued on April 9, 2026, and says that the Trump administration cannot remove any of the panels of the exhibit as the case makes it way through the court system.

This ruling comes several weeks after a court order required the Trump administration to restore the exhibit in Philadelphia’s Old City.

The exhibit was originally removed at the end of January at Independence Hall on 6th and Market streets. NBC10 crews were on the scene on Jan. 22 and found that the plaques had been taken down.

According to the city’s visitor center, the exhibit shows the names of nine people who were enslaved by George Washington, America’s first president. The exhibit was housed on the same land where the homes of Presidents Washington and Adams once stood.

The removal came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March of 2025 that read in part, “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers or similar properties within the Department’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

During a press conference on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, Congressman Brendan Boyle introduced the Protecting American History Act to prevent the censorship of U.S. history, following the exhibit’s restoration.

“We need to tell all of our history, the things in which we are rightfully proud and the things that shame us,” said Boyle. “It’s only dictatorships and communist countries that whitewash their history and give an official version, rather than an accurate version.”