The Trump administration agreed Monday to fly a rainbow Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, months after removing the flag from the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement in the United States.
The agreement, filed in the Southern District of New York, says the flag will only be removed for maintenance “and other practical purposes.” It says the National Park Service will hang three, equally sized flags on a pole at the West Village monument on Christopher Street within seven days: The American flag will top the pole, with Pride and NPS flags below it.
Alexander Kristofcak, lead counsel for a group of civil rights organizations that sued in federal court to restore the Pride flag, said in a statement Monday that the settlement was “a complete victory for our clients and for the LGBTQ+ community.”
The Trump administration previously said it removed the flag this February in accordance with longstanding rules about flags at National Park sites. Officials cited a federal directive stating that in most cases the National Park Service can only fly the U.S. flag, the Department of the Interior flag and the Prisoners of War flag in the public spaces it maintains. But the policy also makes exceptions for cases when a flag provides historical context to a site.
Civil rights groups alleged the removal violated multiple federal laws and policies on historic preservation and management of national monuments. They said the removal illegally targeted the LGBTQ+ community.
“The sudden, arbitrary and capricious removal of the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument was yet another act by this administration to erase the LGBTQ+ community,” Karen Loewy, co-counsel for the plaintiffs and senior counsel and director of constitutional law practice at the nonprofit Lambda Legal, said in a statement.
Loewy said the agreement meant “the government has pledged to restore this important symbol back to where it belongs.”
Messages to the National Park Service were not immediately returned Monday.
The history of Pride flags at the Stonewall site is long and storied, but in 2022, during the Biden administration, the National Park Service installed its own Pride flag inside the park. At the time, it was considered the first permanent Pride flag on federal land. After the federal agency took it down this year, hundreds of people rallied at the site to hoist a replacement.
“We fought the Trump administration — and we won,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said in a statement Monday. “I’m thrilled that after we rallied and re-raised the Pride flag with elected officials and advocates on Feb. 13, 2026, the Trump administration has blinked and backed down from its contemptuous attempt to erase American history.”
This is a developing story and may be updated.