Op-Ed | El Capitan Is Not A Billboard

Former Yosemite park ranger and biologist Dr. Shannon “SJ” Joslin, who was fired last summer for hanging a trans flag on El Capitan, is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to a report by PEER [Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility].” The Advocate Website, February 24, 2026

In his pathbreaking history, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness, Dr. Alfred Runte reminds us that the national parks have never been free of greed or prejudice. National parks are not meant to be billboards for any cause, product, corporation, or individual.

The event on that May morning in 2025 at Yosemite was not about park preservation. The flag wavers simply turned El Capitan into a personal bulletin board.  Dr. Joslin was off duty, she further rationalized, so the importance of expressing the message was immune to park regulations. She may even have incorrectly believed that her conduct violated no rules. 

But here, PEER is not defending the environment.

Rest assured, if a park employee, or other member of the public, hung a KKK flag, Hamas flag, or a foreign flag on El Capitan, PEER would not be rising to their defense. Rather, the El Capitan flag message is considered ideologically “pure.” Safe.

The point is that no conduct conflicting with preservation should be tolerated. No activity incompatible with preservation belongs in a national park.

Face it. Few park managers or advocacy group leaders have read Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness. Or Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash. Or Regreening the National Parks by Michael Frome. For that matter, many no longer read John Muir.

Generations of park rangers and biologists, many in Yosemite, followed in the footsteps of illustrious predecessors, pioneers from Harold C. Bryant and Carl P. Russell to Carl Sharsmith and George M. Wright. We know that the National Park Service (NPS) has never condoned this behavior, nor does it now.

As a retired park manager myself (last serving as deputy superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park), I, too, may have discharged an employee who violated park regulations. Properly, Yosemite supervisors accepted no excuse for actions contrary to the rule of law. And their action had nothing to do with the content of the message.

No doubt, any park employee who has been terminated deserves a day in court, but no environmental group should consider such an employee a victim. PEER exists to defend park personnel from dismissal, but above all to protect the parks and the environment. Its title says so.

Nor is alleged free speech an excuse. Dr. Joslin and all NPS employees are free to speak in any way they please, just not at the expense of the park. And not in violation of the duly-adopted rules that protect park character.

Park employees are supposed to save Yosemite, not turn it into a personal sounding board. Again, the message is irrelevant. The fact is THIS free speech (or closely related and equally-protected "expressive conduct") was in violation of the regulations governing the National Park System. Funny thing about free speech. It is for everyone. It is not only for “our side.” The rule of law applies to all, or it does not exist, except as an empty political slogan.

True, the First Amendment restraints on government do not stop at the park boundaries. Many courts have upheld the First Amendment rights of citizens within the parks, including in one of my own legal battles Buono v. Norton (9th Cir. 2004).

Free speech is subject to reasonable time and place restrictions. Pointedly so on national park land. The Supreme Court said so in 1984 (Clark v.  Community for Creative Nonviolence). I

n the parks, any person seeking to assemble or collectively express views must first obtain a permit from the park superintendent under 36 CFR 2.51 – adopted by the NPS in 1983, over 40 years ago. At Yosemite, the persons who draped the flag on El Capitan never applied for nor received a permit for their conduct. Park managers reasonably judged this conduct to be illegal.

Further consider the individuals who entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They too were engaged in "expressive conduct." But that conduct also violated a number of laws, including entering a closed area and parading in the Capitol without a permit. And it was, for that reason, impermissible conduct, subject to appropriate legal sanction. It is irrelevant whether we agree or disagree with their point of view. The trespassers violated the law in so doing.

For a park manager, the principle remains unassailable—hanging a flag on the hallowed walls of Yosemite or parading with flags in the hallowed halls of the Capitol both violated federal laws and regulations. Federal statute classifies both as misdemeanors. El Capitan is not a public forum, open to all for the expression of any views. Not then and not now.

Federal employees, including NPS employees, have the right of free speech on their off-duty hours and on their personal social media. But when the expression of views is by conduct that violates NPS rules, or other federal laws, such conduct is not protected as “free speech.” The NPS may counsel and reprimand such employees.

True, the flag incident in Yosemite by a sincere NPS employee left no temporary or permanent injury to El Capitan. PEER's defense of this conduct rests on the bogus premise that the flag wavers were not engaged in a "demonstration."

What was it then?

PEER seems oblivious or unconcerned that should their sophistry prevail, PEER sets a damaging precedent by tempting others to follow suit. Others will undoubtedly repeat the exercise, climbing higher than the El Capitan flag wavers to be “heard.”

“Hooray for our side,” they will shout.

It just won’t be the side of the national parks.

Frank Buono has worked in every aspect of national parks for almost 30 years, as a backcountry and law enforcement ranger, interpreter, fee collector, volunteer, and retired as deputy superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park. He instructed for the National Park Service for 20 years after that.