Yosemite Biologist Fired After Hanging Transgender Pride Flag From El Capitan

A Yosemite National Park ranger was fired last week after they hung a transgender pride flag from famed climbing wall El Capitan this spring.

SJ Joslin, formerly a wildlife biologist at Yosemite, and several others lugged a 58 lb flag up the imposing wall and flew the flag on a heart-shaped feature of the rock for two hours in a celebration of their transgender identity, they said in an interview with KQED.

Joslin was not on duty at the time and was not acting on behalf of the National Parks Service, they said.

“I just thought: What better of a place to hang a huge flag whose entire point is acceptance and celebration of a group of people — and really everyone?” they said.

But last week, Joslin received their termination letter, which said they “failed to demonstrate acceptable conduct.”

Rachel Pawlitz, spokesperson for the National Park Service, would not comment on Joslin’s specific case, but confirmed NPS is “pursuing administrative action against multiple employees for failing to follow National Park Service regulations.”

Pawlitz wrote in a statement that there have been multiple “unauthorized demonstrations involving El Capitan” and that “displaying signs, banners, and flags outside of designated First-Amendment areas detracts from the visitor experience and the protection of the park.” Demonstrations, she added, require a permit.

Yosemite has First Amendment zones, where 25 or more people can gather in permitted demonstrations.

“We want to emphasize that we take 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,” Pawlitz wrote.

Joslin said flying the flag was not a demonstration, but rather a celebration of identity, and criticized the parks service for taking action against them and not others who have similarly displayed flags on the prominent rock wall facing Yosemite Valley.

In fact, the park changed its flag-flying policy just one day after Joslin scaled the wall, banning large flags over 15 square feet in wilderness areas within the park.

“Hanging flags on El Capitan goes back decades,” they said, referring to a recent “Stop the Genocide” flag hung in 2024 and an upside-down American flag flown in February of this year, among many others.

Yet, “we are the only group of people that have been prosecuted for hanging a flag.”

Joanna Citron Day, general counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a legal assistance group that plans to assist Joslin in pursuing reinstatement to their position, said Joslin’s firing was arbitrary and “politically motivated.”

“SJ got fired for exercising their First Amendment right — period,” she said. “The message it sends is be scared and be quiet.”

LGBTQ+ advocates in the Bay Area condemned Joslin’s dismissal as part of the administration’s ongoing attacks on the trans community.

Pattie Gonia, a drag queen and environmental activist, who was also involved in hanging the flag, defended Joslin, writing in a statement that their firing “is not just an attack on SJ, but a targeted move by the Trump administration to silence and punish anyone who practices free speech and dares to stand in defiance of the erasure of trans people.”

Elizabeth Villano, an organizer with Resistance Rangers, an unofficial group of off-duty rangers advocating for public lands, said Joslin’s firing — along with a recently-revoked Department of Interior order that asked applicants to government jobs to answer questions about how they would help implement Trump’s agenda — is part of a concerted effort to make what should be nonpartisan work ideological.

“What the Trump administration is trying to do is to make sure that those people who are on the ground in these bipartisan jobs are only supporting his agenda,” Villano said. “It seems as though what they’re slowly trying to do is weed out the people who disagree with them.”

Villano said the rules National Parks rangers must abide by while on duty are strict — they can’t so much as recommend their favorite restaurant to a visitor, for example — but those rules don’t apply when they are off-duty.

Plus, she said, Joslin’s firing also goes against Trump’s early 2025 order that bars federal officials from infringing upon free speech, creating “a really disturbing pattern.”

“It makes you wonder what they mean when they say they want to bring back free speech,” Villano said. “To me, the harder they push back on that, the more it reminds us of how powerful it is when we speak out.”

Joslin said they plan to pursue legal action to try to get their job back, and that their firing indicates that “the rules only apply to certain people.”

“I think that my firing is a signal to other federal workers, especially NPS workers, that if you don’t comply with the ideology or the message that this current administration wants to send, then you will be eliminated,” they said. “I really care about Yosemite National Park and I want to continue caring for it in my role as a wildlife biologist.”