The Kennedy Center Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images Logo text Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) is seeking a court order to halt the closure of the Kennedy Center and reverse its name change, her legal team claims that both moves were done illegally and without any of the review President Trump claims took place.
“The central basis for President Trump’s decision—the supposed ‘one-year review’ with experts and consultants—never happened. Nor did Defendants perform the thorough and reasoned analysis that is necessary before taking the drastic step of closing a performing arts center for two years,” the filing in federal court Wednesday reads.
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Beatty, an ex-officio board member of the Kennedy Center, previously sued Trump, who named himself chair of the center, after she said she was blocked from attending board meetings and voting when the Trump-appointed board members voted to rename the center the Trump-Kennedy Center in December. She was able to attend the center’s March 16 meeting, but was not able to vote.
At that meeting, the board moved to vote for the two-year closure of the center starting July 7, due to what Trump has described as necessary renovations determined after a one-year review.
However, after the court compelled the Kennedy Center to produce documents, Beatty says the center “produced four reports commissioned and delivered under prior Kennedy Center management in 2021, 2022, and 2024,” rather than the review that Trump claimed took place, and those did not contemplate a total closure of the center.
“Those reports contemplated the Board conducting capital maintenance while the Kennedy Center remains open, consistent with the Board’s statutory obligations. Based on nothing more, and seemingly in response to the public and performers fleeing the Center after its unlawful renaming in honor of the sitting president and self-appointed chairman of the board, Defendants rushed to close the Kennedy Center,” the filing states.
“They acknowledged that there was not a single analytical report created during the prior year and that Defendants did not consult a single outside expert or consultant in that period,” the filing adds.
“We’re confident the court will uphold the board’s decision on the name change and the desperately needed renovations which will continue as scheduled,” Roma Daravi, Vice President of PR for the Kennedy Center, said in a statement.
Per the documents from the Kennedy Center, the planned renovations, which were funded by $257 million in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will include $48.5 million to renovate performance venues, which includes $23 million for the Concert Hall, $8 million for the Opera House, $7 million for the Eisenhower Theater, $3 million for the Family Theater, $2 million for the Terrace Theater and close to $1.8 million for the Theater Lab, among several other facility improvements.
The filing notes that even if the renovations were necessary, it would still take months before construction begins, which would allow the center to remain open for some time.
“The purpose of closure without that kind of preparation can only be an unlawful demolition-first-ask-questions-later approach that President Trump disastrously adopted with the East Wing of the White House—destroying protected buildings before anyone can stop him,” the filing states.
As noted in the filing, the two-year closure comes after many artists cancelled their performances at the Kennedy Center, including Philip Glass, Issa Rae, Renee Fleming, Hamilton and the Washington National Opera, which has moved its shows out of the center.
During the closure, court documents show that the only remaining engagements that would be impacted by the stated two-year closure include the theatrical engagements of Back to the Future, Mrs. Doubtfire, The Outsiders, Fraggle Rock, Shear Madness and an artist agreement for Anthony D’Alessandro.
As for the renaming of the center, Beatty argues that the change “violate the Board’s obligations to maintain the Center as a living memorial” to former President John F. Kennedy.
“There is no clearer or more significant breach of fiduciary duty than the Board flouting the central purpose of the institution it is charged with protecting and which Congress enshrined into law: to maintain the Center as a memorial to John F. Kennedy—and to no one else,” the filing states.
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