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 administration has 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 fly only 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.
Advocates and civil rights groups alleged that 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.”
Advocates said the settlement reflects both a legal win and the impact of public pressure.
“The restoration of the Pride flag at Stonewall is a hard-fought victory — and a testament to the power of a community that refuses to be erased,” said Kei Williams, executive director of The NEW Pride Agenda, an LGBTQ advocacy group in New York.
Messages to the National Park Service were not immediately returned.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who joined elected officials and advocates at the site after the flag was removed in February, said the agreement shows opponents of the Trump administration can prevail by organizing and going to court.
“This court settlement means that Trump blinked,” Hoylman-Sigal said in an interview at Stonewall. “He backed down and the flag’s going to continue to fly.”
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.
For some New Yorkers gathered at the monument on Monday, the settlement felt personal. Arman Guevar, a longtime city resident who said he is living with AIDS, said the flag represents a small but meaningful space for LGBTQ people in a city and country where they are under pressure.
“You guys have the whole entire planet, mountains, whatever,” Guevar said. “We have this tiny little piece that represents us.”
State Sen. Erik Bottcher also welcomed the reversal.
“We are not going anywhere. We will not be erased,” Bottcher said in a statement, calling the restoration of the flag a response to public pushback against a broader attack on LGBTQ people.
