A federal judge temporarily blocked on Friday President Donald Trump’s planned closure of the Kennedy Center and ruled the Center’s Board acted unlawfully when they voted to add Trump’s name to the building and its title.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled in favor of U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty — an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s Board who filed a lawsuit in March to challenge the institution’s name change and closure — and ordered the Center to remove Trump’s name from the building and all other official branding materials. Cooper said the Board’s decision to close the Center for renovations was “ill-informed,” and the law was “crystal clear” that the Center be named only after President John F. Kennedy.
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” Cooper said in the ruling.
Cooper found the Board violated its “fiduciary duty” in voting to close the Center, and the Board was thus “derelict” in fulfilling its duties to the Center. Cooper’s order constitutes a preliminary injunction, or temporary order, to prevent “irreparable harms” while the case is ongoing, and does not categorically prohibit future closures of the Center.
The Kennedy Center’s Board, which Trump appointed himself chair of in February 2025 and subsequently filled with his family members and administration officials, voted to rename the building to the Trump-Kennedy Center in December, and Trump announced plans in February to close the building for two years for renovations. Trump at the time said the renovations were needed to bring the “tired, broken and dilapidated” institution to the “highest level of success.”
Beatty said in a post on X after the Board voted to rename the Center that the person in control of the call muted her as she attempted to object and vote against the renaming. She said the vote was not unanimous, as Trump had claimed, and was not on the meeting’s agenda.
Cooper in his ruling said Beatty as an ex officio member of the Board is entitled to voting rights, and the Center’s statute makes no distinction between the powers of general and ex officio trustees.
Trump’s planned closure was scheduled to start on July 4. Trump said in February the Center would close in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary, and the administration would simultaneously begin construction on a “new and spectacular Entertainment Complex.”
Both the White House and the Kennedy Center did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling.
Trump blasted Cooper’s decision in a post on Truth Social following the ruling, saying Cooper and the “radical left” would rather see the Center “die” than see through his planned renovations. He said he has directed the Department of Commerce to make “all necessary arrangements” with Congress to transfer the responsibility for the Center’s operations, management and maintenance to the department.
“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else — bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically — I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND,’” Trump said.
Beatty in a social media statement following the ruling said she is proud to have fought for the rule of law and the ruling shows the Kennedy Center belongs to the American people.
“Today’s ruling rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law,” the statement reads.
The ruling comes after several performers have pulled out of their scheduled performances at the venue to boycott Trump’s overhaul and the Washington Post reported in October 2025 ticket sales at the Center dropped following the takeover.
