A federal appeals court on Wednesday denied President Trump’s request to restore his name to the facade of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in the latest setback to the institution’s legal battle against the federal courts.
In their decision, three judges from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that President Trump had failed to prove that the arts complex would be “irreparably injured” by the removal, as his attorneys had argued in previous court filings. President Trump’s name was affixed to the center’s marble facade in December, after a board comprised of his allies voted to rebrand the institution.
The decision triggered swift backlash from Democratic lawmakers and created an existential—and potentially financial—crisis for the organization. More than two dozen performers subsequently canceled appearances at the center, including composer Philip Glass, who had been scheduled to premiere a new symphony.
US District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled on May 29 that the board had acted unlawfully, finding that only Congress had the authority to rename an institution dedicated as a memorial to President Kennedy. The judge also ruled that the board had acted unlawfully in approving a two-year closure of the institution for renovations.
The Trump administration attempted to suspend that ruling last month, filing an emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit just hours before the June 13 deadline to remove his name.
The motion was denied, and in the early hours of June 13, the center removed the letters spelling out the president’s name. By then, all references to him had already been scrubbed from the center’s letterhead, website, and other official branding. The facade’s signage, however, remains covered by tarps and scaffolding, prompting a new court order: the Trump administration has until July 31 to explain why the institution’s restored legal name is obscured.
Throughout this process, the institution has argued in court that removing the president’s name from the building, only to later restore it, would waste both “time and money” and risk the loss of millions of dollars in gifts from donors who “were only willing to do so with the name ‘Trump’ on the building.”
The three-judge panel for the appeals court was evidently unmoved, again denying the Trump administration’s request for a temporary stay of the removal. The panel noted in its Wednesday ruling that “since that removal has already occurred, a stay would not avert those harms.”
