President Donald Trump at a press conference at the White House in Washington on February 27, 2025 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA; via AP Images).
The Trump administration“s efforts to pull permits from protesters displaying “8647” flags and signs on National Park Service property near the National Mall hit a judicial wall on Tuesday.
The government ordered such flags be taken down in the aftermath of the alleged assassination attempt against President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in late May.
In response to National Park Service officer’s commands, a volunteer with the Accountability Now USA plaintiffs complied, and was told that replacing the flag would result in a violation of the group’s permit. While the litigation had been filed the month before, the officer’s threat prompted an amended complaint later that very same day.
Early this month, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, a Barack Obama appointee sitting in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary restraining order in the plaintiff’s favor, reasoning that it was “difficult to fathom how” the government “could have concluded that a reasonable observer would view the flag as a true threat.”
In the middle of the month, Moss doubled down on his earlier findings, extending the original restraining order and enlarging it to cover other flags and signs that display versions of the “8647” message.
Now, for the third time, the judge has sided with the protesters, ruling on a motion for summary judgment and permanently enjoining the government from threatening their permits over the flying of the flags in question or any other signage with “substantially similar” messages.
“Freedom of speech is a bedrock constitutional right,” the 51-page memorandum opinion begins, citing a 2023 ruling that upheld a gag order on Trump himself in a since-shelved criminal case. “Political speech in particular is the lifeblood of American democracy.”
In a self-aware aside, the court juxtaposes the length of the present ruling with the relative difficulty of the constitutional analysis.
“Although the Court’s opinion is lengthy, that does not mean that this is a hard case,” the opinion goes on. “It is not. Plaintiff’s signs and flag fall well within the heartland of protected First Amendment speech, and Defendants offer no plausible basis for suppressing Plaintiff’s core, political speech. If ‘hard cases make bad law,’ one can only hope that easy cases make good law.”
The judge rejected the Trump administration’s argument that “8647” is an “incitement” to violence unprotected by the First Amendment. Rather, the court found that the numerical slogan was a call to “impeach and remove President Trump from office.”
“The record contains no evidence that a reasonable observer would have viewed the flag as an incitement to imminent violence or that Plaintiff intended to incite political violence,” the opinion continues. “National reporting that certain government officials view the phrase ‘8647’ as a threat to the President does not make it so, and certainly does not turn Plaintiff’s use of that phrase into something that it is not.”
Since December 2025, the plaintiff group has held a 24/7 demonstration in the nation’s capital against the second Trump presidency. Since the Jeffrey Epstein scandal engulfed the administration, some of those signs have included phrases like “Trump raped little girls,” and “Kids, if your parents are MAGA, they love child rapists.”
Over the course of the lawsuit, the DOJ would eventually complain that the sexual misconduct signs are obscene, then later amend its briefs to argue they were obscene as to minors.
In the opinion, Moss determined they were no such thing.
“Their argument borders on the absurd,” the opinion continues. “Accusations of rape—and, in particular, rape of a child—are undoubtedly disturbing. But they do not pique a shameful or morbid interest in that repugnant and criminal act. Here, moreover, Plaintiff’s signs unequivocally condemn ‘child rapists’ or those who ‘raped little girls.’ They do not, by any stretch of the imagination, ‘deal with sex in a manner appealing’ to minors’ shameful interest in child rape or pedophilia.”
The court later opines on the public interest at stake.
“These displays implicate the ‘most sacred of rights’ – Plaintiff’s First Amendment right to engage in core political speech in a public forum—and even a brief interference with that right comes at a grave price to Plaintiff, in particular, and the public interest, more broadly,” the opinion continues.
A representative for the plaintiff welcomed the court’s ruling in a press release issued by the ACLU of Washington, D.C.
“We at Accountability Now are pleased that the Court has upheld our First Amendment right to display signs addressing the President’s alleged sex crimes, as well as our peaceful 8647 flags and artwork, at our 24/7 demonstration,” organizer Anita Carey said. “We will continue to exercise our constitutional right to lawfully and peacefully call for the President’s impeachment, conviction, and removal from office. As the nation celebrates 250 years of independence, this ruling underscores the enduring importance of public dissent in our democracy.”
