Photo Credit: Vincent Yuan
A US District Court judge has now ruled that adding Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center was a violation of federal law, while further ordering the immediate removal of the Trump name from the building. A two-year renovation plan has also been nixed by the Obama-appointed judge.
On Friday (May 29th), a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must be removed from the Kennedy Center within 14 days. The judge noted that adding his name to the venue violated federal law, and also blocked the institution from closing for over a year for renovations.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper said the historic venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress. Judge Cooper noted that the law establishing the Kennedy Center “makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so.”
Within two weeks, officials must remove any signage from the Kennedy Center containing Trump’s name. They must also update their website to remove all references to the “Trump Kennedy Center” or the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Further, the center is permanently blocked from “displaying, installing, or maintaining any physical or digital signage on the Kennedy Center building or grounds that designates, suggests, or implies that the institution is named for any person other than President John F. Kennedy.”
Cooper, an Obama-appointed judge, said the center may still move ahead with renovations to the building—just not close down for an extended period. There’s also room for the board to decide to close down the center for renovations, but only after further consideration of the impact such a move would have on the institution’s statutory requirement to maintain some programming at all times.
“There is no evidence before the Court that the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees considered how it would accomplish its full legislative mandate during the closure period,” Cooper wrote.
Unsurprisingly, Trump took to his Truth Social to blast the decision, implying that he is no longer interested in working on the Kennedy Center if renovations, closures, and naming rights are disallowed.
“I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight,” Trump wrote. “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”
Already, the Kennedy Center’s Trump-appointed board has indicated plans to appeal the ruling. “We are confident that on appeal the court will uphold the board’s will to recognize President Trump’s historic contributions to our nation’s cultural center,” said Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations.
