{"id":196666,"date":"2026-04-14T10:58:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T10:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/196666\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T10:58:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T10:58:21","slug":"it-took-a-lawsuit-to-return-the-pride-flag-to-nycs-stonewall-monument-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/196666\/","title":{"rendered":"It Took a Lawsuit to Return the Pride Flag to NYC\u2019s Stonewall Monument"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February, the National Park Service (NPS)\u2014operating under Trump\u2019s anti-DEI insanity\u2014quietly and abruptly took down a large rainbow Pride flag that had flown<\/a> at New York\u2019s Stonewall National Monument since 2019<\/a>. Activists called it a \u201cdisgusting slap in the face,\u201d Manhattan\u2019s borough president called it \u201cpetty and vindictive,\u201d and Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) called it<\/a> an \u201cact of erasure.\u201d All true! Hundreds of people flocked to Greenwich Village\u2014where the 1969 riots that kicked off the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement began\u2014to protest.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the decision was reversed, and the administration agreed\u2014or, more accurately, was told by the courts\u2014to put the Pride flag back. A big win for a battle that was won decades ago\u2026<\/p>\n

The reversal settles the lawsuit brought by LGBTQ+ activist groups led by the Gilbert Baker Foundation<\/a>\u2014named for the artist who created the Pride flag\u2014which argued that the February decision violated federal law. Per a NPS memo signed in January, while the agency is generally not allowed<\/a> to fly \u201cnon-agency flags and pennants\u201d that aren\u2019t<\/a> the U.S. flag or the flag of the Department of the Interior, the exception is flags that provide historical context\u2014which is how national parks can fly Confederate and military flags.<\/p>\n

Invoking this rule to take down the Pride flag, the lawsuit argued, was an act of illegal discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.<\/p>\n

The flag was originally removed on February 9. Nearly a year earlier, in February 2025, the NPS also deleted<\/a> the words \u201ctransgender\u201d and \u201cqueer\u201d from\u00a0the Stonewall website. Hundreds also flocked to Greenwich Village to protest the animus\u00a0after the decision\u2014though the words remain removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe flag will be restored, it will fly officially and permanently, and the court will stand ready to enforce that commitment,\u201d Alex Kristofcak, one of the lawyers in the case, told<\/a> the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0on Monday. \u201cThe government has acknowledged what we argued from day one: The Pride flag belongs at Stonewall.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Trump administration has done whatever it can to demonize the LGBTQ+ community. On his second day back in office, Trump signed<\/a> an executive order claiming to \u201crestore biological truth,\u201d and subsequently erase trans people. He also told Marjorie Taylor Greene\u2019s wannabe-journalist boyfriend in September that they could figure out how to make the Pride flag a terrorist symbol, and in October, FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly fired a longtime employee for having the flag on his desk<\/a>. Idaho\u2019s GOP Gov. Brad Little also recently signed a law banning \u201cunauthorized\u201d flags, which includes the Pride flag. (Idaho responded by opting for<\/a> rainbow-colored flagpoles, instead. Genius.)<\/p>\n

But I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s 2026 and it\u2019s news that NYC is allowed to fly the Pride flag. Yay for not, like, a full regression, I guess?<\/p>\n

Like what you just read? You\u2019ve got great taste.\u00a0Subscribe to Jezebel<\/a>, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you\u2019ll get access to a bunch of\u00a0subscriber benefits<\/a>, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that)\u00a0ad-free.<\/a>\u00a0Plus, you\u2019ll be\u00a0supporting independent journalism<\/a>\u2014which, can you even imagine\u00a0not\u00a0supporting independent journalism\u00a0in times like these<\/a>? Yikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In February, the National Park Service (NPS)\u2014operating under Trump\u2019s anti-DEI insanity\u2014quietly and abruptly took down a large rainbow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[55644,9,56,63,65,64,31659,57285],"class_list":{"0":"post-196666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-national-park-service","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-ny","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-nyc-headlines","13":"tag-nyc-news","14":"tag-pride","15":"tag-rainbow-pride-flag"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}