A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former Yosemite National Park ranger who was fired after flying a giant transgender pride flag from a rock wall that looms over the California park’s main thoroughfare.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston found on Friday that Shannon “SJ” Joslin, who identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronoun they, must follow the process set out by the Civil Service Reform Act. Since Joslin was still a probationary employee at the time of their firing last year, that means they must file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, which they have done.
The Office of Special Counsel denied Joslin’s initial request to put their termination on hold while investigating whether the Park Service broke the law, according to court filings. A final determination is due in August.
Joslin, a biologist who studied bats, said they helped hang a 66-foot-wide transgender pride flag on El Capitan for about two hours on May 20, 2025, before taking it down voluntarily. Joslin hung the flag on their day off, not while they were on duty.
They told The Associated Press last year that hanging the flag was their way of saying, “We’re all safe in national parks.”
Joslin’s termination letter, received in August of 2025, accused them of “failing to demonstrate acceptable conduct” and cited the flag incident. “You participated in a small group demonstration in an area outside the designated protest and demonstration area without a permit … and thus circumvented rules applicable to all park visitors,” the letter stated.
Many parks have designated “First Amendment areas” where groups of 25 or fewer people can protest without permits. Yosemite has several of those areas, including one in Yosemite Valley, where El Capitan is located.
Joslin’s lawsuit accuses the National Park Service, the Department of Interior and other defendants of constitutional violations, including violating Joslin’s right to free speech. It says Joslin’s termination was “vindictive, retaliatory, intended to communicate disapproval of a particular point of view,” according to court filings. While others have flown flags on El Capitan, Joslin says they know of no one else who has been punished for it.
In her Friday ruling, Thurston acknowledged that the procedure for challenging a termination set out in federal civil service rules leaves probationary employees like Joslin with very limited recourse when a decision goes against them. But the judge noted that allowing probationary employees to take complaints directly to the courts would give them more options than tenured employees have.
A day after Joslin’s flag display, the park instituted a rule prohibiting people from hanging banners, flags or signs larger than 15 square feet in park areas designated as “wilderness” or “potential wilderness.” That covers 94% of the park, according to Yosemite’s website.
The rule followed another high-profile demonstration from February 2025 when a group of demonstrators hung an upside-down American flag on El Capitan to protest the firing of National Park Service employees by President Donald Trump’s administration.
