A brand new lawsuit filed in Washington, DC’s federal court docket Monday challenges the Kennedy Center board of trustees’ move to add President Donald Trump’s name to the cultural institution.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and an ex-officio trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is bringing the lawsuit. She alleges a current vote by the Center’s board of trustees to add Trump’s name went past the authority given to the board by Congress.
“This is a flagrant violation of the rule of law, and it flies in the face of our constitutional order,” she wrote within the submitting.
Her grievance repeated an account she gave on social media of being muted through Zoom in the course of the board assembly final week when she tried to converse up in objection to the vote. She stated within the lawsuit that the vote and the addition of Trump’s name to the bodily constructing the day after have been “scenes more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes than the American republic.”
Beatty is being represented by Democracy Defenders Action and the Washington Litigation Group. There had not been any request for emergency intervention filed to the case’s docket as of Monday night.
NCS has reached out to the White House and Kennedy Center for remark.
“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 stated in an announcement. “This entire process has been a complete disgrace to this cherished institution and the people it serves. These unlawful actions must be blocked before any further damage is done.”
Congress renamed the humanities heart after former President John F. Kennedy in laws handed after his 1963 assassination, and federal law requires that the board “assure that after December 2, 1983, no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
Experts informed NCS final week that whereas the board’s determination was seemingly illegal, it’s unclear whether or not somebody trying to problem the move would have the authorized proper – often called “standing” – to even pursue such a case. “There is absolutely no way they can do this legally,” stated David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law who focuses on laws. But, he added, “the administration is not concerning itself with laws unless it has a realistic prospect of getting sued.”
New signage that includes the president’s name was put in the day after the vote.
Trump has touted his affect on the performing arts heart, and he claimed final week that the establishment is experiencing “record-setting numbers” in donors.
“We’re saving the building. We saved the building. The building was in such bad shape, both physically, financially and every other way. And now it’s very solid, very strong,” he stated.
NCS’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.