March 10 2026, 08:15 
The nonbinary Yosemite National Park ranger who was fired last year for hanging a transgender Pride flag at the park’s El Capitan rock formation says their dismissal is part of a broader pattern of intimidation aimed at both federal employees and the trans community.
“Yes, I lost my job for this flag. But this wasn’t the first way that the Trump administration had been scaring us into silence as federal workers,” Shannon “SJ” Joslin recently told The Hill.
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Joslin is speaking out after filing a federal lawsuit late last month accusing the National Park Service and other federal agencies of “illegal and unconstitutional” retaliation for their First Amendment-protected speech.
Last May, Joslin and six other climbers, including two other park rangers and the environmentalist drag queen Pattie Gonia, scaled El Capitan to hang a trans Pride flag. As The Hill notes, such displays are common at the rock formation, and according to advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), there is no record prior to Joslin’s of disciplinary action or sanction for hanging a flag at “El Cap”, let alone a termination or criminal investigation.
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“There’s been no problem with hanging flags up until this point,” Joslin said. “It’s been something that climbers have been doing since humans have been climbing El Cap.”
The day after Joslin and the other climbers hung and later removed the trans flag, Yosemite Superintendent Ray McPadden announced a ban on “any banner, flag, or sign larger than fifteen square feet” from any of the park’s “natural or cultural feature[s]” without a permit. A week later, Joslin and two other National Park Service (NPS) employees were informed that the agency had opened a criminal investigation into their actions, despite the fact that they had broken no law and had not violated any park regulation at the time.
In August, Joslin received a termination letter in which NPS accused them of “failing to demonstrate acceptable conduct” in their capacity as an NPS employee, citing the flag “demonstration” as cause for their dismissal. The two other park rangers who participated are reportedly on administrative leave pending the investigation.
Joslin’s attorney, Joanna Citron Day, told The Hill that her client’s First Amendment rights have been trampled on. “They have been fired and criminally investigated and treated like a pariah,” Citron Day said.
While a spokesperson for NPS declined to comment on the lawsuit, they told The Hill that the agency takes “the protection of the park’s resources and the experience of our visitors very seriously and will not tolerate violations of laws and regulations that impact those resources and experiences.”
“Yosemite National Park was designated by Congress to highlight the beautiful natural and cultural features of the area,” the NPS spokesperson said. “No matter the cause, demonstrating without a permit outside of designated First-Amendment areas detracts from the visitor experience and the protection of the park. To safeguard the protection of visitors, visitor experiences, and park resources, many demonstrations require a permit.”
Joslin’s lawsuit cites the president’s anti-trans agenda. Since day one of his second term in office, he has signed a number of executive orders aimed at rolling back transgender rights and protections, including one declaring that the U.S. government will no longer recognize trans identity, another banning trans people from serving openly in the U.S. military, and another threatening to block federal funding to schools and athletics programs that allow trans women and girls to participate in women’s and girls’ sports.
“I think that if it wasn’t an identity that this administration was trying to villainize, they would allow free speech to continue,” Joslin said.
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