When reached for comment, the White House pointed to past social media posts from Trump criticizing the court decision. The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The White House announced in December that the Kennedy Center’s board voted “unanimously” to rename the cultural center to the Trump-Kennedy Center — something Trump had joked about as he began to renovate the building.

The vote, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time, was “because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building.”

“Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation,” she added. “The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur.”

But the decision came only after Trump fired multiple board members — including its chair, David Rubenstein — and appointed new trustees. The move sparked immediate backlash, with Democratic lawmakers threatening to sue over the change. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board through her position in Congress, filed the suit on Dec. 22, 2025.

“Only Congress has the authority to rename the Kennedy Center. President Trump and his cronies must not be allowed to trample federal law and bypass Congress to feed his ego,” Beatty said at the time.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper appeared to side with Beatty, ruling last Friday that the rebranding of the institution that honors President John F. Kennedy as the “Trump-Kennedy Center” violated federal law that requires the building to honor “President Kennedy and President Kennedy alone.”

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote in his ruling. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

Cooper also reversed the board’s decision to shut down the center for two years.

After the ruling, Trump posted on social media that he would abandon his pursuit of a Kennedy Center redesign and transfer oversight of the center back to Congress if he did not maintain control over decision-making.

However, the Justice Department said it “will continue to defend President Trump’s ability to restore the Center to its former glory as the finest performing arts center in the country — if not the world.”