On Tuesday, US District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the Trump administration to give at least 30 days written notice if officials plan to demolish the Kennedy Center. This notice period, presumably, would give the court time to decide whether a demolition would be lawful.
Given “recent events,” Cooper wrote, the court “hereby orders Defendants to provide such notice in writing to Plaintiffs…more than 30 days before the implementation of any changes to the scope of the project plans…including but not limited to any ‘demolition’ of the Center’s main building.” The Plaintiffs referenced are Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center board member who has sued to stop the board from renaming and closing the center, and the DC Preservation League, which is engaged in a separate suit.
The court order comes in response to the President’s escalating threats to tear down the Kennedy Center if the courts do not permit him to put his name back on the building’s facade. On Wednesday, the day after Cooper ruled for the second time that installing such signage would be illegal, Trump told a reporter that without his sign, then the building is “going to close, and it’ll end up being ripped down.” Later that evening, he was photographed aboard Air Force One holding a placard that appeared to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
Beatty’s attorneys asked the court on Thursday to “enter an order making clear that…the wholesale demolition of the building” would be unlawful, and also to schedule an emergency hearing regarding Tuesday’s decision to immediately close the Kennedy Center. The ruling is a partial victory for Beatty; Cooper declined to schedule a hearing and ordered a detailed status report instead.
Demolishing the Kennedy Center in violation of a court order would be a profound escalation in the administration’s widespread testing of the courts. As attorney Joyce Vance wrote on Substack, “You may not have had a constitutional crisis over the naming of the Kennedy Center on your bingo card for this year, but here we are.”
