Trump can’t add name to Kennedy Center, judge rules

A federal judge on Friday barred President Donald Trump from adding his name to that of the Kennedy Center, as he did in late December, ruling that “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

Judge Christopher Cooper also temporarily blocked the Washington, D.C., performing arts landmark, which in December had been renamed the “Trump Kennedy Center,” from being closed for two years for renovations at the behest of the president, who is chair of its Board of Trustees.

Cooper’s order came in response to a lawsuit by Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and ex officio Kennedy Center trustee, whose civil complaint challenged the renaming, the closure of the center for renovations, and being stripped of her voting rights by board in May 2025.

Cooper, in his ruling, said the Kennedy Center’s board did not balance its obligations to the center in deciding to shutter for renovations.

But the board might be able to close for that purpose “after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion,” the judge wrote in the decision in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Cooper also said his preliminary injunction “will not prevent the Center from moving forward with the capital repair work it has planned.”

The board’s vote to rename the center came 10 months after Trump removed several trustees from the board and appointed himself as a trustee. The center’s facade was changed to reflect the decision, as were other signs around the facility.

“Representative Beatty is entitled to summary judgment on the renaming issue,” Cooper wrote Friday.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President [John] Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

Cooper also ordered that Beatty have her voting rights restored as an ex officio trustee.

“The Center’s organic statute makes no distinction between the powers of general and ex officio trustees,” Cooper wrote.

“Nothing in the statute permits the Board to discriminate categorically between the two as to fundamental trustee rights,” the judge wrote.

“And stripping ex officio trustees of their voting rights runs afoul of common-law trust principles incorporated into the statute, principles which presumptively place trustees on equal footing when it comes to participating in the trust’s administration.”

Beatty, in a statement, said, “Today’s ruling rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law.”

“The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump,” Beatty said.

“He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”

Beatty’s lawyers, Norm Eisen of the Democracy Defenders Action and Nathaniel Zelinsky, senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group, in a statement said, “This ruling sends an important message: the rule of law matters.

“This is a powerful blow against the Trump administration’s corruption,” they said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, which is defending Trump in the suit, said, “The Department is pleased that the court rejected challenges to the Trump-Kennedy Center renovations, and we will continue to defend President Trump’s ability to restore the Center to its former glory as the finest performing arts center in the country – if not the world.”