Judge Leaves in Place Order to Remove Trump’s Name From Kennedy Center

A federal judge on June 12 declined to pause a ruling directing the removal of President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center in the nation’s capital.

Previously, on May 29, the same judge, Washington-based U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper, ordered that 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.

At that time, Cooper issued an order temporarily halting the closure and preventing the name change. He ruled that only Congress could change the name of the facility.

“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 litigation was 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.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.