Lawyers for a jazz musician who was sued by President Trump’s allies at the Kennedy Center asked a judge on Friday to toss out the lawsuit, calling it an attempt to stifle his protest of the organization’s takeover.
In December, Richard Grenell — at the time, the center’s president and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s — threatened to sue Chuck Redd, a jazz percussionist, for $1 million after Mr. Redd said he would not hold an annual Christmas Eve concert at the facility. Mr. Redd cited his opposition to renaming the performing arts center in honor of Mr. Trump.
The standoff over the show came amid a flurry of litigation surrounding the fate of the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy, which Mr. Trump has recently moved to shut down and reorient toward his own legacy.
Since the president affixed his own name to the building in December, the center has faced a flood of cancellations, affecting more than 45 scheduled performances, stressing its finances and limiting its programming.
The center followed through on Mr. Grenell’s threats and sued Mr. Redd this month, arguing that he had been contractually obligated to appear at the concert. Instead of $1 million, the suit asked for $7,500 in damages.
In his new filing, Mr. Redd contends that he never signed the contract and that the concert, which Mr. Redd has hosted for more than 20 years, was free.
Mr. Redd’s filing also says lawyers for the center demanded he commit to playing at a show in December 2026 “without making any political commentary about the center,” even though Mr. Trump has announced his intention to close the center for a two-year renovation.
On Thursday, the center began laying off staff ahead of its planned closure in July.
In his letter to Mr. Redd in December, Mr. Grenell called the decision to withdraw from the show “classic intolerance,” and a “political stunt” that he said would be “very costly to a nonprofit arts institution.” The center’s lawyers wrote in their initial complaint that Mr. Redd had decided to “abuse the public forum provided to him by the center in order to make a political statement, and to deprive the public of the concert he promised.”
Mr. Redd’s new filing, in D.C. Superior Court, cites the District of Columbia’s “anti-SLAPP” law, which allows the dismissal of frivolous lawsuits filed the intention of squelching protected speech.
Mr. Redd’s lawyers said the center’s demands amounted to a gag order, forcing Mr. Redd to perform against his conscience, and that it had been motivated by Mr. Grenell’s “hostility and retaliatory animus.” They asked Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier to speedily dismiss the case and order the center to pay Mr. Redd’s legal costs.
“The Trump Kennedy Center filed this lawsuit to send a message to anyone who dares to publicly disagree with the decisions of those in power,” Mr. Redd’s attorneys said in a joint statement.
According to the filing, the center sent an updated contract to Mr. Redd in December that included a “morals clause” that said any public comment by the musician that could be “construed as antithetical to the new administration’s politics” would be considered a breach of the agreement.
But Mr. Redd’s lawyers say he never signed the document, although center officials sent it to him seven times in December.
Mr. Trump and the Kennedy Center are also facing two federal lawsuits intended to stop the president’s renaming and renovation plans. Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio and a member of the center’s board, has sued, as has a coalition of leading architecture organizations.
After Mr. Trump purged the organization’s board of trustees last year and installed Mr. Grenell as its president, the board voted to name Mr. Trump chairman in February. Less than two weeks after the center filed the lawsuit against Mr. Redd, Mr. Trump announced he was replacing Mr. Grenell with Matt Floca, a Biden-era hire.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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