The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by a Democratic congresswoman.
The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Dec. 21, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times
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.
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.
Jackson Richman contributed to this report.