Obama-Nominated Judge Orders Trump's Name Removed From Kennedy Center Building

Authored by Matthew Vadum via 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.

Obama-nominated, Washington-based Judge Christopher R. Cooper issued an order temporarily halting the closure and preventing the name change.

“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.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) (C) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) (C) arrive for an event on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 3, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

“Representative Beatty is entitled to summary judgment on the renaming issue,” Cooper wrote Friday.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President [John] Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote.

Cooper also ordered that Beatty have her voting rights restored as an ex officio trustee.

“The Center’s organic statute makes no distinction between the powers of general and ex officio trustees,” Cooper wrote.

“Nothing in the statute permits the Board to discriminate categorically between the two as to fundamental trustee rights,” the judge wrote.

“And stripping ex officio trustees of their voting rights runs afoul of common-law trust principles incorporated into the statute, principles which presumptively place trustees on equal footing when it comes to participating in the trust’s administration.”

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.