A United States federal judge has ordered that President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ruling that the Washington DC cultural institution cannot be renamed without congressional approval.
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The order, delivered on Friday by US District Judge Christopher Cooper, also blocked the planned temporary closure of the centre for proposed renovations. The court directed that Trump’s name be removed from the institution’s title, façade, physical and digital signage, website, trademark applications and official materials within 14 days.
The Kennedy Center had been renamed The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts after Trump’s handpicked board approved the change. New lettering bearing Trump’s full name was later installed on the centre’s front portico.
However, the court held that the centre’s enabling law clearly provides that the institution is named in honour of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and that only Congress has the authority to change its name.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute 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,” Judge Cooper wrote.
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
The ruling followed a legal challenge by Democratic congresswoman and board member Joyce Beatty, alongside other former trustees, who alleged that they were improperly removed from voting on board matters. The plaintiffs later expanded the suit to challenge the planned two-year closure of the centre for renovations.
Reacting to the decision, Beatty said the ruling affirmed that the Trump administration’s attempt to rename and close the centre had no legal basis.
“The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump,” she said, accusing the president of desecrating a memorial to Kennedy for personal vanity.
The Kennedy Center, however, said it would appeal the name-change order. Its spokesperson, Roma Daravi, said the centre remained confident that an appellate court would uphold the board’s decision to recognise Trump’s contributions to the national cultural institution.
Daravi also said the centre would review the part of the ruling blocking the planned renovation closure, insisting that the facility urgently requires significant restoration. She noted that $257 million had been secured by Trump and approved by Congress for the project.
Trump, in a lengthy post on Truth Social, criticised the ruling and said he would work with Congress to transfer the “failing institution” back to them.
“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,” Trump wrote.
Members of the Kennedy family welcomed the ruling, which came on the late President Kennedy’s birthday.
Maria Shriver, Kennedy’s niece, described the decision as an appropriate birthday gift, saying a federal judge had ruled that Trump and the Kennedy Center board acted unlawfully in renaming the centre. Kerry Kennedy also celebrated the decision, while Joe Kennedy III had earlier argued that the centre, like the Lincoln Memorial, could not simply be renamed by political decision.
The court’s order requires the Kennedy Center to remove all physical signage bearing Trump’s name, update its official website, withdraw related trademark applications and file a sworn declaration confirming compliance within 14 days.
The ruling means the institution will revert to its original name, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, unless the order is overturned on appeal.
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