Trump administration agrees to allow Stonewall pride flag

The administration of President Donald Trump has agreed to allow the Pride flag to be flown at the Stonewall National Monument in New York after a settlement was reached in a lawsuit filed by the Gilbert Baker Foundation.

The Gilbert Baker Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the legacy of the artist who created the original Pride flag in 1978, said in court documents Monday that it was seeking a voluntary and permanent dismissal to the case after the government agreed to maintain a Pride flag at the Stonewall.

“The parties agree that under current law and policy, the Pride flag will remain hanging at Stonewall and will not be removed save for maintenance or other practical purposes,” the document reads.

The flag is to be reinstalled on the official National Park Service flagpole within a week, alongside the U.S. flag and NPS flag, according to the document. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.

The foundation was part of a coalition of historic preservation and LGBTQ+ groups that filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration in February after the National Park Service quietly removed the flag from outside the monument.

The Stonewall Inn is a historic gay bar in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, that birthed the modern LGBTQ rights movement after a violent police raid on June 28, 1969.

Police had frequently raided gay bars at the time. But, instead of dispersing, the community resisted—sparking days of protests along Christopher Street and clashes with law enforcement. The next year, the LGBTQ community and its supporters organized the first Pride marches, which continue each year in June.

The Pride flag was created by Gilbert Baker at the request of California activist and politician Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, as a symbol of LGBTQ pride and liberation.

The bar and the area around it were designated Stonewall National Monument on June 24, 2016, by President Barack Obama. It became the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights history, and the Pride flag had flown at the site since the flagpole was installed in 2022.

Its removal came after Jessica Bowron, the acting director of the NPS, penned a memo to regional directors and superintendents with guidance on the display and flying of non-agency flags and pennants within the National Park System.

The Gilbert Baker Foundation argued in the lawsuit that the policies the government said required removing the Pride flag expressly permit the NPS to fly other flags that provide historical context to national monuments. Yet, the Trump administration did not remove other historical flags, including the Confederate flag, from other national monuments.

“This was no careless mistake,” the foundation said. “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 foundation accused the Trump administration of violating the presidential proclamation by former President Barack Obama that established the monument and said the federal government failed to comply with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.

After the flag was removed, an unofficial one was raised by local activists and politicians, which the U.S. Department of the Interior later said amounted to “political pageantry.”

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