(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge said Friday that President Donald Trump can’t close or rename the Kennedy Center, ruling that it cannot be officially named for anyone else unless Congress approves it.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the rebranding of the Kennedy Center as the “Trump Kennedy Center” violates the law, and ordered that Trump’s name be removed from the building within two weeks.
Cooper wrote that the administration “violated the Kennedy Center’s organic statute in purporting to rename the Center for President Trump, and in taking steps to effectuate that official renaming, such as installing signage with Donald J. Trump’s name on the front portico of the Center, altering the Center’s website to name the Center for President Trump, and in issuing official materials naming the Center for President Trump.”
Cooper also wrote “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Congress created the famed cultural institution in a federal statute, designating it as a living memorial in 1964 shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s death.
Trump announced in December that the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, which the president himself now chairs and filled with his hand-picked appointees, had voted “unanimously” to rename the building. Workers added signage with his name shortly after.
Trump also announced earlier this year that the Kennedy Center would be closed for two years starting in July for major renovations.
Cooper blasted the board for making an “ill-informed” and “seemingly preordained” decision to close the center.
“Finally, the Court is preliminarily persuaded that the Board’s March 16 vote to close the Kennedy Center pending a years-long renovation represents a dereliction of its common-law- derived duty of prudence,” Cooper wrote. “The current record reveals that the Board rendered this ill-informed and seemingly preordained decision without regard for how it would accomplish its full array of statutory responsibilities. The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one.”
The changes are being challenged in court by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, who sits on the Kennedy Board of Trustees as one of its ex-officio members.
“Today’s ruling rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law,” Beatty said in a statement Friday. “The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump. He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”
The Trump administration has defended the renovation as fulfilling the board’s “responsibilities to repair and improve the Center.”
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling, according to sources familiar with the matter.
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment on the ruling.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous and Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
