Rep. Joyce Beatty has sued President Trump to force the removal of his name from the Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The lawsuit argues that the center’s board vote to rename the building was illegal because an act of Congress is required for such an action.
The board last week voted to rebrand the Kennedy Center with Mr. Trump’s name, leading to the rapid installation of new front-facing signage and corresponding digital rebranding.
Ms. Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as an ex officio member of the center’s board of directors, described the addition of the president’s name as a “flagrant violation” of the Constitution.
The Trump administration said the board voted “unanimously” to change the name, but Ms. Beatty refutes this. She said that participants’ microphones were muted on the call, and she could not voice her opposition to the name change.
“I said, ’I have something to say,’ and I was muted, and as I continued to try to unmute, to ask questions and voice my opposition to this, I received a note saying that I would not be unmuted,” Ms. Beatty told reporters last week. “I was not allowed to vote because I was muted. I would not have supported this.”
The defendants include Mr. Trump and the board members appointed.
Ms. Beatty is represented by Norman Eisen, a White House ethics counsel in the Obama administration, along with Nathaniel Zelinsky, his co-counsel of the Washington Litigation Group.
“The President and his sycophants have no lawful authority to rename the Kennedy Center,” Mr. Eisen and Mr. Zelinsky said in a joint statement. “Congress named the Kennedy Center as a national memorial to President Kennedy, and only Congress can change that. We are proud to represent Congresswoman Beatty as she defends the integrity of this institution and the separation of powers.”
The lawsuit asks the court to declare the board’s renaming vote unlawful, order the removal of the new name and prevent further attempts to rename it without congressional authorization.
“Congress intended the Center to be a living memorial to President Kennedy and a crown jewel of the arts for all Americans, irrespective of party. Unless and until this Court intervenes, Defendants will continue to defy Congress and thwart the law for improper ends,” the lawsuit reads.
Critics have decried the new name, including multiple members of the Kennedy family.
“The Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law,” former Rep. Joe Kennedy III, Massachusetts Democrat, wrote on social media. “It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says.”
The center’s interim President Richard Grenell said that the president “saved” the Kennedy Center.
“It’s now a bipartisan space reflecting the new era,” he said on social media.
Mr. Trump also said he reversed the deterioration of the Kennedy Center.
“We’re saving the building. We saved the building. The building was in such bad shape — physically, financially, in every other way,” Mr. Trump said. “And now it’s very solid and very strong.”
