Judge Rejects Democrat’s Bid to Vote on Kennedy Center Plans (1)

A Democratic lawmaker must be permitted to speak, but won’t get a vote, at an upcoming Kennedy Center board meeting on President Donald Trump’s plans to temporarily close the performing arts center he renamed for himself, a Washington federal judge held.

Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper of the US District Court for the District of Columbia declined on Saturday to force Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board to allow Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) to vote during Monday’s meeting.

Beatty is an ex-officio board member as a member of Congress, which created the arts center as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy after his assassination.

However, he said that the Trump administration must provide Beatty with certain information about closure plans by Sunday, 24 hours before the scheduled meeting start. The board must also allow Beatty to speak at that meeting and have a “meaningful opportunity to voice her dissent.”

Cooper pointed to Trump’s past statements that the plans for the Kennedy Center had undergone a “one year review” and that financing was “completed.” A project “of this salience and magnitude” regarding a major national memorial “does not happen overnight,” Cooper wrote.

“Since plans for major work at the Kennedy Center have been brewing for a year, the government is hard-pressed to argue that there is no readily-available material to provide. If there are no such plans, the Defendants are free to say so,” Cooper wrote.

The government’s claim at a March 12 court hearing that this information wasn’t yet finalized, four days ahead of the scheduled meeting, “borders on preposterous,” the judge said. And its assurance that trustees will be able to review the information at the meeting before voting is “cold comfort—and, from a fiduciary perspective, strikes the Court as falling below even a forgiving standard of prudence,” he wrote.

Still, the judge emphasized that this order “is not the Court’s final word in the case,” but that some emergency relief was warranted “in light of the urgency and magnitude of the present situation.”

Monday’s board meeting is planned to be held at the White House, where members are expected to be briefed and vote on plans to close the center in July for renovations.

Trump posted computer-generated images on TruthSocial on Friday of the building that he described as “Two renderings of the new, highly improved, TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER!” Trump also announced that day that Richard Grenell would be replaced as Kennedy Center president by Matt Floca, the vice president of its facilities operations.

Trump previously announced plans on TruthSocial to temporarily close the building on July 4, 2026, “whereupon we will simultaneously begin Construction of the new and spectacular Entertainment Complex.”

Beatty asked the judge to restore her voting power at board meetings, after Trump’s Kennedy Center board changed its bylaws to prevent ex-officio members from voting. She also sought an order for the government to provide board members with materials about the renovation and closure plans ahead of time.

Beatty said in a statement Saturday that “no president has the authority to shut Congress out of the governance of the Kennedy Center, much less unilaterally rename or demolish it.”

“We will not stand by while an important part of our national heritage is jeopardized, and I intend to make that clear at next week’s board meeting,” she said.

Beatty sued Trump and other officials after the board voted in December to rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” The new name was installed on the building the next day.

Beatty later updated her lawsuit to challenge plans to shutter the performing arts hall. Cooper said in Saturday’s order that he will consider Beatty’s requests to block the renaming and the closure “at a later date—though not too much later, given the time-sensitive nature of the events here described.”

Trump’s announcement of plans to close the Kennedy Center followed declining ticket sales and multiple artists canceling scheduled performances. Trump appointed himself to the Kennedy Center’s board shortly after taking office, pushed out existing board members, and replaced them with his supporters.

The case is Beatty v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-04480, 3/14/26.