(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Saturday mostly in favor of Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, in her effort to obtain more details about the planned closure and renovation of the Kennedy Center, which is set for a board vote at the White House on Monday.
Judge Christopher Cooper also ruled that as a trustee, Beatty must be afforded a “meaningful opportunity to provide input” and not be “categorically barred” from speaking at the meeting, which President Donald Trump is set to chair.
But Cooper stopped short of requiring at this stage that Beatty be permitted to cast a vote as a trustee, saying that is a “trickier question” with no clearcut answers.
“As the foregoing facts suggest, a project of this salience and magnitude—which threatens to involve at least some demolition and reconstruction of a major national memorial and active performing arts theater—does not happen overnight,” Cooper said in his ruling.
The judge directed the government to provide Beatty with materials on the project ahead of the Monday meeting.
“The government’s assertion, both in its briefing and at the hearing, that such information is ‘preliminary’ and not yet sufficiently ‘finalized’ to share with the full slate of decisionmakers—just four days before the Board is set to vote on a complete, two-year closure of the Center they are statutorily charged with overseeing—borders on preposterous,” Cooper said.
Beatty’s pending lawsuit challenges the renaming of the Kennedy Center to the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as the pending closure and renovations. Cooper said the court will address those issues at a later date.
“No president has the authority to shut Congress out of the governance of the Kennedy Center, much less unilaterally rename or demolish it,” Beatty said in a statement Saturday. “We will not stand by while an important part of our national heritage is jeopardized, and I intend to make that clear at next week’s board meeting.”
The White House didn’t immediately have a comment about the ruling.
Asked for comment on the lawsuit previously, White House spokesperson Liz Huston told ABC News in a statement that the Kennedy Center’s board voted to rename it after Trump “stepped up and saved the old Kennedy Center.”
As for whether a sitting member of the House who serves on the Kennedy Center board as a function of her office can vote, Judge Cooper said that the legal argument in Beatty’s favor is strong, but how the board has operated in practice in that respect is not clear.
Some veterans of the Kennedy Center recalled ex-officio members of the board voting, while others say they never observed that.
The board approved a bylaws change last May to delineate presidentially-appointed general trustees from “nonvoting” ex-officio members.
“Though the Court thinks that Beatty has the better statutory argument as to both participation and the right to vote, her battle for emergency relief on these fronts is not yet won,” Cooper ruled.
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