A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts could not honor President Trump with an inscription on the institution’s exterior, blocking an effort by the center’s board to restore the president’s name to the building.
“Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington wrote in the order. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”
The center first affixed the president’s name to the building in December, after its Trump-allied board voted to add it to the institution’s formal title in recognition for his role in securing $257 million for a sweeping renovation project.
In May, Judge Cooper ruled that the renaming as the Trump-Kennedy Center was unlawful and could only be decided by Congress, which had authorized the creation of the center and its dedication to President Kennedy. The judge ordered the letters spelling out the president’s name removed from the marble.
As it pursued an appeal, the center complied.
But last month its board voted to restore Mr. Trump’s name in a different form, aggressively testing the judge’s previous order. The resolution approved by the board proposed an inscription under the building’s main signage that would read “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump.”
Judge Cooper declined to rule on whether a different inscription — saying “endowed by The Trump Kennedy Center Fund” — would be allowed because the center said it would not pursue the addition until an endowment fund dedicated to the president raises $100 million.
The board’s attempt to inscribe Mr. Trump’s name was met with furious objections from Democratic lawmakers, including Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio, who has been suing the center as an ex officio board member. Lawyers for Ms. Beatty called the effort a “breathtaking act of defiance” and asked the judge to block the center from adding the inscription.
Kennedy Center officials and Justice Department lawyers have presented the inscription as crucial to Mr. Trump’s continued support of the center, which they have said is in financial disarray and physical disrepair.
“An order blocking the Board from appropriately recognizing President Trump will cause donors to flee, financial contributions to dry up, and structural rehabilitation to stop,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in court papers filed in the case. “There will simply not be the expertise or funding necessary to rebuild and renovate this decimated structure.”
Lawyers for Ms. Beatty have characterized Mr. Trump’s position as effectively “taking the center hostage.” Since the president took over the institution at the start of his second term, it has seen waves of cancellations by artists, plummeting attendance by audiences and withdrawal of support from some donors.
The board’s decision to recognize Mr. Trump with an inscription was an effort to find a workaround to a provision in the federal law governing the Kennedy Center that says “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has yet to rule on whether Mr. Trump’s name can be restored to the center, a decision that could ultimately be appealed up to the Supreme Court.
Judge Cooper’s decision came shortly before a meeting of the center’s board, which is chaired by Mr. Trump. The board is expected to consider a resolution that orders — for the third time — the closure of the Kennedy Center’s main building for two years as it pursues renovations. A draft resolution circulated to board members called the building “hazardous,” citing an incident this month in which a five-foot-long section of plaster fell from the ceiling of the center’s Grand Foyer during a storm.
The court had temporarily blocked the center from carrying out its initial decision to close the building after finding that board members had been “derelict” in considering the president’s closure plan before approving it. Justice Department lawyers said they will ask Judge Cooper to lift that order so the center can formally close the building.
The center’s programming schedule has been largely bare since July, when it was initially slated to close, leaving a largely empty building.
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