Bucks, Collar Counties File Legal Brief Over Removal Of Slavery Exhibit

Bucks County is among counties to have filed a joint “friend of the court” brief Monday in opposition to the federal government’s abrupt removal of a slavery exhibit at the President’s House site on Independence Mall in Philadelphia.

Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware counties filed an amicus brief in support of the City of Philadelphia’s lawsuit against the National Park Service.

The filing argues the federal government’s removal of the display, which detailed the lives of nine people enslaved by George Washington, constitutes an unlawful “erasure” of local and national history.

The January removal of the historic exhibit comes after a spring 2025 order from U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to review National Park Service displays that “disparage Americans past or living.”

President Donald Trump’s administration has characterized exhibits on slavery as “inappropriately” disparaging to the country, with the president stating last year on social media that there is too much focus on “how bad slavery was.”

“Attempts to erase evidence of our history do not heal the stains of the past – quite the opposite, they make us weak and vulnerable to repeating our failures,” said Bucks County Commissioner Chairperson Diane Ellis-Marseglia, a Democrat.

“In Bucks County, with our place in American history firmly rooted, we resist temptation for self-delusion and instead confront our faults head on, resolving always to do better tomorrow than we did yesterday. Only then can we achieve our country’s founding vision of equality for all people,” she said.

The historic site at 6th and Market Streets served as the executive mansion for Washington and John Adams in the 1790s.

The now-removed panels and videos highlighted how Washington skirted Pennsylvania’s 1780 gradual abolition law, which freed enslaved people after six months of residency, by rotating those he held in the city back to Virginia before the deadline.

The legal battle fight is focused on whether the federal government has the authority to unilaterally alter the site.

According to KYW Newsradio, city government attorneys argue that multiple agreements, including the 1948 pact establishing Independence National Historical Park, require joint approval for changes.

A federal government attorney told the court the 2006 agreement for the exhibit has expired and ownership has transferred fully to the National Park Service, according to the Philly Voice.

“Our history is imperfect, but it is ours, and the federal government can’t rewrite it or ignore it the moment they find it inconvenient,” said Delaware County Council Chair Richard Womack, a Democrat.

The NAACP Bucks County Branch and the African American Museum of Bucks County both issued statements condemning the removal of the display.

The soon-to-open museum in Middletown Township called the action by the federal government “nonsensical,” adding that society only improves by remembering both the “good and the bad” of history.

U.S. Senior District Judge Cynthia Rufe, a former Bucks County Court of Common Pleas judge, ordered that no further changes be made by the federal government to the site while she reviews the case.

The panels are currently being stored at a federal facility near the National Constitution Center, according to the Philly Voice.

Ballard Spahr LLP is representing the counties’ filing on a pro bono basis.

“We will not stand by as the federal government attempts to rewrite history by breaking the law,” said Chester County Commissioner Chairperson Josh Maxwell, a Democrat.