A Democratic congresswoman sued the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees Monday to stop it from adding the president’s name to the institution, arguing that only Congress has the power to do so.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) claimed that a vote by the center’s board last week to rename the institution the Trump Kennedy Center exceeded its statutory authority and requested that a judge declare it to be void.
“Because Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress,” the lawsuit says.
The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent early Tuesday morning.
Thursday’s vote by the Kennedy Center’s board to add Trump’s name to the institution — which has sparked concern among legal experts — marked the most overt effort to date by the president and his allies to remold the storied institution in his image. In February, Trump purged members of the board not appointed by him, installed loyalists and became its new chair. Earlier this month, he even hosted its annual honors event. Ticket sales have plummeted since Trump took over, a Washington Post analysis found.
The lawsuit, which was filed by Democracy Defenders Action and the Washington Litigation Group on behalf of Beatty, requested that a judge order all physical and digital branding changes to be reversed. Trump’s name was added to the exterior of the building Friday, the day after the board’s vote.
Beatty, who is an ex officio member of the center’s board, said in the suit that she had attended the board meeting virtually and had been unmuted previously, but that when she identified herself and raised concerns about the renaming, she was muted and received a written message that “she would not be unmuted, and therefore she could not participate in the meeting.”
In 1964, the year after Kennedy was assassinated, Congress passed a statute designating the capital’s National Cultural Center as “the sole national monument to his memory within the city of Washington and its environs” and naming it the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
In a series of posts on X, the center’s president, Richard Grenell, defended the name change as a reflection of its role as a “bipartisan space.” On Friday, he claimed the memorial to Kennedy was not impacted by the board’s action and “therefore the Board is allowed to change the name.”
In an email to The Washington Post last week, Roger Colinvaux, a law professor at Catholic University, said the law clearly states that the building’s name is the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. “Under the statute, the board that voted to change the name not only does not have the authority, but that each member by so voting violated their duty,” he said.
On Tuesday, the center’s website prominently referred to itself as the “Trump Kennedy Center,” but in other sections it continued to use the name “the Kennedy Center.”
Members of the Kennedy family reacted with dismay to last week’s vote. “Some things leave you speechless,” said Maria Shriver, a niece of Kennedy, on X. “It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial,” said Joe Kennedy, the former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts whose great-uncle the building was named for.
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