Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to remove President Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.
Beatty, an ex-officio board member for the center, said adding the president’s name to the venue is a “flagrant violation” of the Constitution.
“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.
Beatty is being represented by Norman Eisen, who served as a White House ethics counsel during the Obama administration, along with Nathaniel Zelinsky, his co-counsel of the Washington Litigation Group, according to The New York Times.
The Ohio Democrat added that the Trump administration falsely claimed board members “unanimously” voted to change the name to include Trump on a call last week. However, Beatty said participants’ microphones were muted and they were not given a chance to address their concerns.
On Friday, the Kennedy Center updated its signage on the outside of the building to include the president’s name.
Critics, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), have argued the move is illegal. However, the center’s interim President Richard Grenell pushed back on that argument.
“It’s now a bipartisan space reflecting the new era. Donald Trump saved it,” Grenell wrote in a post on social platform X.
The Trump administration launched an overhaul of the center earlier this year, rewiring programming and restricting performances deemed “inappropriate.”
Beatty’s lawsuit said the adjustments including the name change are “more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes than the American republic-the sitting President and his handpicked loyalists renamed this storied center after President Trump.”