WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) – A Democratic board member of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts said she will seek a court order blocking Republican President Donald Trump’s name from being newly inscribed on the building’s facade, months after a federal judge said only Congress could rename the iconic Washington venue.
In a court filing late on Tuesday, Democratic U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty said the board had acted in “naked defiance” of the judge’s prior decision in the case.
The center’s board, stocked with Trump-appointed allies, voted 20-3 on August 13 to alter the building’s signage to read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” while naming the center’s grounds the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” The board also voted to close the center for two years.
Beatty asked for additional proceedings in the case in order to seek a ruling halting the return of Trump’s name to the building, which absent court intervention could happen as early as September 8.
“Adding the words ‘Restored and Renovated by,’ or ‘Endowed by,’ before President Trump’s name, and renaming the ground on which the building sits, provides no lawful basis to ignore this Court’s decision and impose Donald Trump’s name on a memorial dedicated by the Congress exclusively to a different President,” the filing said.
Lawyers for the Trump administration said in the joint filing that they disagreed with Beatty’s arguments and that “the record will demonstrate the Board’s prudence.”
Beatty, a member of the Kennedy Center’s board by virtue of her position in Congress, sued the Trump administration last year after the board changed the Kennedy Center’s name and altered its signage to place Trump’s name before that of President Kennedy.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in May that the board overstepped its authority by unilaterally renaming the site, which was created as a memorial to Kennedy after the Democratic president’s 1963 assassination.
Cooper said the board had wide discretion to make operational decisions about the center but could not rename it. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” the judge ruled.
Trump’s name was removed from the building’s white marble facade in June, with a large tarp draped over the wall since then. A federal appeals court in July denied the administration’s bid to keep the name up while it appeals Cooper’s ruling.
In Tuesday’s filing, the Trump administration said the tarp and scaffolding were erected for water testing and structural repairs to a roof overhang.
Beatty’s lawyers called that explanation a “pretextual justification,” arguing the tarp and scaffolding are meant to “frustrate the intent of the Court’s order that the Center be returned to a memorial exclusively honoring President Kennedy.”
Trump’s push to renovate and rename the Kennedy Center is part of the president’s broader efforts to reshape Washington. Last week, an appeals court ordered the administration to stop construction on a $400 million ballroom Trump plans at the site of the White House’s demolished East Wing.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; additional reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by David Bario and Chizu Nomiyama)