Shawn Thew / EPA
The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts
A US judge on Friday ordered the removal of President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ruling that Washington’s iconic cultural space cannot be renamed without a law approved by Congress.
The federal judge Christopher Cooperfrom Washington, ordered the Trump administration remove all physical signage with Trump’s name and eliminate, within 14 days, all references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials.
The judge stated that his decision “is not intended to dictate how the Center should be managed, nor to prescribe any specific plan for the institution — construction, closure or other solution — going forward.”
The decision comes within the scope of a lawsuit presented by Ohio Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beattymember of the board of directors of the Kennedy Center due to his duties in Congress.
In a statement following the decision, Beatty said that the “Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not Donald Trump”.
Trump’s plan to form part of a broader initiative by the Republican leader to remodel Washington’s monumental corenote to .
Trump also intends in Washington, and to build a ballroom with approximately 8360 square metersin the location where the East Wing of the White House was located, which Trump .
These initiatives face equally. A federal appeals court has authorized the Trump administration to move forward with construction of the ballroom while it reviews the case.
Cooper’s decision also locks the closure of the building for two years, foreseen by the Trump administration. The judge said his order does not prevent the Kennedy Center from move forward with structural repair works already foreseen which, according to the elements of the process, are “urgently necessary”.
The board of directors may still close the center, wrote Cooper, “if you reach that decision againafter independently and prudently considering its multiple obligations to the Center.”
“The administrators could have assessed the suitability closure in a number of prudent ways. This wasn’t one of them”, wrote the judge, according to reports.
Beatty sued the Trump administration in December, classifying the building’s name change as “a flagrant violation of the rule of law” which “affronts our constitutional order”.
The congresswoman’s lawyers welcomed Cooper’s decision in a statement. “This is a powerful blow against administration corruption Trump,” said lawyers Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky.
The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 as a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy.
