Appeals Court Denies Kennedy Center Effort To Retain Trump Name On Facade

UPDATE, 4:31 p.m. PT: An three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit turned down the Kennedy Center‘s effort to retain Donald Trump‘s name on the complex’s facade past a midnight deadline.

The judges denied the center’s request for an immediate administrative stay that would have put on hold U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s order that Trump’s name be removed from all references to the name of the Kennedy Center by the end of the day on Friday. While it has been removed from the website and social media, it has remained in its most prominent physical spot: at the marble entrance to the building.

Outside of the center on Friday afternoon, scaffolding has gone up, drawing spectators and news crews on Friday afternoon in anticipation of the name being removed. C-SPAN set up a live feed of the facade with crews preparing to take the letters down. But the workers left the area as the center took their case to the federal appellate court.

Cooper ruled last month that the center had to revert to its original name, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

As the clock ticked to take Trump’s name down, the board of the center on Thursday sought a stay from Cooper. But earlier on Friday, Cooper rejected the effort. He wrote that the center’s board has “not carried their burden to establish that a stay of the Court’s May 29, 2026 permanent injunction concerning the Kennedy Center’s renaming is warranted pending an appeal of the underlying ruling to the D.C. Circuit.”

Among other things, the judge wrote that the center had failed to show that they were likely to succeed in overturning his earlier ruling, or that removing Trump’s name would cause “irreparable harm.”

The appellate judges will consider another Kennedy Center effort to retain Trump’s name, but they set a briefing schedule for later this month, after the Friday night deadline.

Cooper’s May ruling was on a lawsuit brought by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, who challenged the renaming and closure plans.

The center’s Justice Department attorneys stated in a filing on Thursday, “Defendants have strong arguments to raise on appeal, and the equities and public interest cut against requiring Defendants to remove the Center’s signage only to put it up after prevailing on appeal, as that would be both wasteful for the Center and confusing for the public.”

Trump serves as the center’s chairman, after engineering a takeover of the arts institution just weeks into his second term.

Cooper ruled that the board overstepped its authority when it voted in December to add Trump’s name, something that draw immediate pushback from Democratic lawmakers and members of the Kennedy family. The judge wrote that the center was named by Congress for John F. Kennedy in 1964, and “only Congress can change it.” He gave the center two weeks to remove references to Trump from the name of the center.

The center has since reverted back to simply “Kennedy Center” on its website and social media, among other places. But the signage for Trump remains on the facade of the building, with one camera monitoring for the moment when it comes down.

The board argued in its filing that “removal of the name threatens to impede the Center’s fundraising efforts and contribute to the financial decline of the Center. This loss of fundraising time and potential is also definitionally irreparable, and the public interest weighs in favor of an economically viable Center. Moreover, requiring a name change now, only to potentially revert back to the current name after appeal, would be incredibly confusing for the public. The far more sensible course is to allow the D.C. Circuit to adjudicate this appeal before requiring these sorts of compliance measures.”

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Since’s Trump’s takeover, and later the name change, the center has seen an artist exodus and a falloff in ticket sales, according to sources from the institution. Its primary audience is in Washington, D.C., northern Virginia and Maryland, which voted heavily in favor of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

The judge also ruled that the board’s plan to close the center for two years for renovations — which was to start next month — failed to consider the full impact of shuttering for such a lengthy period of time. The judge ruled that the center could proceed with renovations, but the board had to conduct a more comprehensive review of the closure plan.

Beatty’s legal team, led by Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, filed a response on Friday morning calling the center’s motion for a stay “frivolous.” They argued that the center provided “no support” for its assertion that removing the name would hurt fundraising efforts, while the board’s “own conduct—waiting two weeks and within hours of the deadline for compliance before seeking extraordinary relief from the Court—underscores that they suffered no harm.”