By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Thursday will weigh a new legal challenge that seeks to block President Donald Trump’s name from being inscribed on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
The hearing before U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington is scheduled for 2 p.m. ET (1800 GMT) and will mark the second time the court has been asked to block the Kennedy Center from putting Trump’s name on the memorial to the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Cooper in May ordered the iconic entertainment and cultural venue to remove Trump’s name from the building, siding with Democratic U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio in a lawsuit challenging the renaming. Cooper said Congress established the Kennedy Center’s name and that “only Congress can change it.”
Beatty, who serves on the Kennedy Center’s board by virtue of her position in Congress, had sued after the center changed its marble facade in December to read: “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
The Kennedy Center in June removed Trump’s name from the building’s marble facade, and a large tarp has covered the wall since then. The administration lost an early effort in a federal appeals court to put Trump’s name back up while it appeals Cooper’s order.
The Kennedy Center board, composed of Trump-appointed members, voted on August 13 to again alter the building’s signage, this time to read “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” while naming the center’s grounds the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
Beatty said the move violates Cooper’s prior order and asked the court to block the new plan.
The administration countered that adding the new language does not violate the court’s injunction because the building would still be named the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. It said the “Restored and Renovated by” inscription simply acknowledges Trump’s role.
The filing described what it called Trump’s efforts to save the Kennedy Center, including with a two-year planned closure for renovations.
“Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site,” the administration said.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario and Lisa Shumaker)
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