Court finds Trump board unlawfully renamed Kennedy Center and 'preordained' its two-year closure

On Friday, May 29, 2026, U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper issued a 94-page opinion holding that the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts acted beyond its legal authority when it added President Donald Trump's name to the federally chartered institution. The court found that the Kennedy Center's organic statute fixes its name in honor of President John F. Kennedy and that the board could not unilaterally rebrand it: "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it." Cooper ordered Trump's name removed from the building and the center's website within 14 days.

The ruling also blocked the board's March 2026 decision to close the center for roughly two years. The judge characterized that vote as an "ill-informed and seemingly preordained decision" reached on "an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information," and found that the board had overstepped by stripping a member who sits ex officio through her role in Congress of her right to vote at the meeting where the closure was approved. The decision treats both the renaming and the closure as actions that exceeded the board's statutory mandate over a congressionally created cultural institution.

Trump, who installed himself as chairman of the board after replacing its prior members, responded to the ruling by saying his administration would move to put Congress in control of the center. The decision is the authoritative judicial record underlying a separate, later development the archive is tracking: the president's demand that Judge Cooper be criminally charged and impeached over this ruling (monitoring issue #35), which represents the retaliatory response to the unlawful action documented here.