Trump’s Permit Threat Over 8647 Flags Runs Into Legal Limits

The Trump administration’s bid to revoke permits from demonstrators who displayed “8647” flags and signs on National Park Service land near the National Mall ran into another setback in federal court on Tuesday.

The dispute intensified after the government directed protesters to remove the flags following the alleged assassination attempt against President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in late May.

According to the case filings, a volunteer affiliated with the Accountability Now USA plaintiffs complied when ordered by a National Park Service officer to take down one of the flags. The officer then allegedly warned that putting it back up would violate the group’s permit. Although the lawsuit had already been filed a month earlier, that warning led the plaintiffs to submit an amended complaint later the same day.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who sits in Washington, D.C., granted the plaintiffs a temporary restraining order. In doing so, he wrote that it was “difficult to fathom how” the government “could have concluded that a reasonable observer would view the flag as a true threat.”

By midmonth, Moss had reinforced that position, extending the initial restraining order and broadening its reach to include additional flags and signs featuring variations of the “8647” message.

The judge has now ruled for the protesters a third time. In deciding a motion for summary judgment, Moss permanently barred the government from threatening the group’s permits over the display of the challenged flags or any other signs carrying “substantially similar” messages.

“Freedom of speech is a bedrock constitutional right,” Moss wrote at the start of his 51-page memorandum opinion, quoting a 2023 decision that upheld a gag order against Trump in a criminal case that has since been shelved. “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.”