President Biden signed the FY2024 NDAA, codifying DoD's facially neutral 'approved flags' policy that excludes the Pride flag

On December 22, 2023, President Biden signed H.R. 2670, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, into law as Public Law 118-31. Section 1052 of the law, "Prohibition on Display of Unapproved Flags" (codified at 10 U.S.C. 2661 note), bars the display of any flag other than an enumerated "approved flag" — including the U.S. flag, state flags, military service and command flags, and several other listed categories — in any Department of Defense workplace, common access area, or public area. The Pride flag is not among the flags the statute designates as approved, apart from a catch-all provision allowing a flag to be approved "at the discretion of the military chain of command or senior civilian leadership." The provision codifies into federal statute the exclusionary policy the Pentagon first adopted in a July 2020 memo issued by then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, which the Department said in 2021 it would maintain even during Pride Month.

An earlier, explicit House-passed provision banning display of the Pride flag specifically was removed during conference negotiations between the House and Senate, after LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, mobilized opposition. The version that reached the President's desk instead carried only the facially neutral approved-flags list that became Section 1052. Advocacy groups characterized the removal of the explicit ban as a partial victory while noting the enacted list still excludes the Pride flag from the categories of flags DoD facilities display as a matter of course.