DELRAY BEACH — Florida transportation crews returned to downtown Delray Beach for the second time in as many days in the early hours of Sept. 10, this time covering the city’s rainbow-colored Pride intersection completely in black paint.
The overnight action came just hours after a tense emergency meeting in which the Delray Beach City Commission voted 3-1 to join Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach in a legal challenge aimed at preserving the artwork.
The crosswalk, long a symbol of LGBTQ visibility in the city’s arts district, has become a flashpoint in a broader battle between local officials and the state over public art, political expression and who controls what appears on Florida’s streets.
During a roughly 90-minute emergency session Sept. 9, dozens of residents crowded City Hall to voice outrage over the state’s first attempt to paint over the intersection, which had left behind a smeared mix of rainbow colors and black streaks.
The Florida Department of Transportation applied a second coat of black paint over Delray Beach’s rainbow-colored intersection early Wednesday morning, Sept. 10, 2025.
Rainbow-colored miniature flags dot the intersection of NE 1st Street and NE 2nd Avenue in Delray Beach after the Florida Department of Transportation painted over the rainbow-colored crosswalk on Sept. 10, 2025.
After emotional public testimony, the commission voted 3-1 to join Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach in petitioning the Division of Administrative Hearings to block further state interference and to seek a stay that would allow Delray to restore the mural.
But even as commissioners debated their legal strategy, Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) crews had already signaled they would return.
By early Wednesday, the intersection at Northeast 1st Street and Northeast 2nd Avenue was blanketed in black paint, erasing nearly all traces of the mural that city leaders had fought for months to preserve.
And unlike the first time FDOT painted over the crosswalk, this time roads leading to the intersection were blocked off by trucks or cones, presumably to let the paint dry.
An FDOT worker at the intersection did not want to comment.
Jasmine Fernández is a journalist covering Delray Beach and Boca Raton for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at jfernandez@pbpost.com and follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @jasminefernandz. Help support our work. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FDOT erases Delray Pride crosswalk overnight, city vows to fight back