Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty filed a lawsuit Monday arguing that the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts cannot legally add President Donald Trump’s name to the center.
Beatty serves as an ex-officio member of the board and has said she was “muted” during the board’s vote to change the name on a video call earlier this month. Her lawsuit states that only Congress has the power to change the name.
“The Board’s purported renaming of the Kennedy Center violates federal law,” Beatty said in the lawsuit, which she filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “By statute, Congress has named the center as ‘the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.’ Under our constitutional system, only Congress can modify a statute, and Congress must do so by enacting a new statute.”