The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by a Democratic congresswoman.
A federal district judge on May 29 ordered that President Donald Trump’s name be removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and blocked officials from shuttering the venue for two years for renovations.
Washington-based Judge Christopher R. Cooper issued an order temporarily halting the closure and preventing the name change.
“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,” Cooper said.
Congress organized the center as a “bureau” within the Smithsonian Institution directed by a board of trustees, he said.
The board was given several duties, including “programming obligations,” “memorial obligations” honoring the legacy of Kennedy, and general maintenance obligations, the judge said.
To satisfy these obligations, Congress “empowered the Board to do the kinds of things that boards typically do: negotiate contracts, prepare budgets, employ personnel, solicit and accept gifts, transfer property, bargain with employees, procure insurance, and issue annual reports.”
The lawsuit’s claim that the center’s board violated its fiduciary duty in voting to close the center was “likely to succeed,” the judge said.
A fiduciary duty is a duty of loyalty, care, and good faith that one party owes to another in positions of trust.
“The preliminary factual record before the Court reveals that, in ratifying President Trump’s closure announcement, the Board was derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center,” Cooper said.
The judge said the injunction will not prevent the center from proceeding with capital repair work it has planned and that is “sorely needed.” Nor will it stop the board from closing the center “should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion.”
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” the judge said.
The new ruling came in response to litigation initiated in December 2025 by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) who sued Trump and the Kennedy Center board of trustees over its renaming as the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Beatty is an ex officio member of the center’s board of trustees.
Days before, the Kennedy Center board had unanimously voted to rename the institution the Trump-Kennedy Center. That same day, new lettering was installed on the outside of the building along with digital rebranding.
Trump took to social media to criticize the ruling. He also suggested he would work with Congress to give that body direct control over the center.
On Truth Social, he said that Cooper was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and added that the judge and “the Radical Left would rather see [the center] DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life.”
To save this “dying Performing Arts Center … we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.”
“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management,” the president said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the judge’s chambers for comment. No reply was received by time of publication.
Jackson Richman contributed to this report.
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Trump Says He Will Transfer Kennedy Center to Congress After Judge Blocked Planned Closure for Renovation
