On Monday night, a D.C. district court judge granted a permanent injunction protecting the free speech of pro-impeachment protesters and allowing them to display slogans President Donald Trump had sought to have suppressed. This is a major victory not only for First Amendment advocates but for those pressing for Trump’s impeachment.
The news was shared by Lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff, who posted Tuesday morning, “Judge Moss granted permanent injunction to pro-impeachment protesters, protecting their right to display '8647’ flag[.]”
Parloff then quoted from the judge’s decision, which read, “Although the Court’s opinion is lengthy, that does not mean that this is a hard case. 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.”
The judge wasn’t finished, quoting a previous case: “If ‘hard cases make bad law,’ one can only hope that easy cases make good law.”
As the ACLU — which represented the group targeted by the administration — explained, this decision prohibits “the Park Service from revoking the permit of Accountability NOW USA or confiscating and destroying the group’s property… Accountability NOW has held a 24/7 demonstration in D.C. since December 2025 calling for the impeachment and removal of Trump from office ... The Park Service informed the organization that these signs are ‘obscene’ and could lead to the revocation of their permit to protest.”
What’s more, after the group filed suit against the Park Service, alleging an attack on the First Amendment, the administration sought to prevent Accountability NOW from displaying a flag that read “8647.” “86” is a phrase commonly used in the restaurant industry to ban or remove someone from an establishment, and “47” refers to Trump being the 47th president. The phrase had been used by protesters over the course of his term, but raised controversy when former FBI Director James Comey posted an image of the numbers formed using seashells, prompting the Justice Department to indict him under accusations that it was intended as a threat against the president — the same logic used in the case against Accountability NOW USA.
Then in early June, the judge presiding over the case granted a temporary injunction to protect the group’s usage of the slogan, writing at the time, "The record contains no evidence that a reasonable observer would have viewed the flag as an incitement to imminent violence.” This allowed the group to continue using the flags and signs until the case was heard.
And now it has been, and the injunction protecting the group’s free speech has been made permanent, with the judge writing that the signs “do not, by any measure, cross the line from protected political speech to unprotected obscenity.”
“Again and again, the National Park Service has tried to shut down this speech simply because it is critical of Donald Trump,” said Aditi Shah, staff attorney at ACLU-D.C., who argued the motion in court. “The definitions of ‘obscenity’ and ‘true threat’ are narrow and for good reason; the government should not have wide latitude to shut down critical speech using ‘obscenity’ and purported ‘threats’ as covers. We’re grateful that the court saw through the government’s ruse.”
