Judge Rules Lawmaker Must Be Allowed to Join Kennedy Center Board Meeting

A judge ordered that Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat, be given access to documents and have the chance to oppose changes to the center at next week’s board meeting.

A federal judge in Washington on Saturday ordered that Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio, be allowed to participate in a planning meeting about the future of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, temporarily resolving a minor standoff with President Trump.

The ruling appeared to give Ms. Beatty, an ex officio member of the center’s board of trustees, a window into the president’s goals for remaking it in his image, after dozens of performers canceled shows in protest and patrons worried about a proposed multiyear closure of the performance space.

Ms. Beatty, who was appointed to her position by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019, has sought to use her ex officio status to fight against changes to the institution as Mr. Trump asserts more control over its governance.

The center’s board is scheduled to meet on Monday, though Ms. Beatty argued that the purpose of the meeting had not been explained and that she had been kept out of the loop.

On Saturday, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the Federal District Court in Washington agreed that Ms. Beatty needed to receive a more thorough accounting of the meeting’s agenda and be allowed “a meaningful opportunity to lodge her dissent.”

Despite the ruling, it was unclear how much say she would be afforded in the meeting or in the plans going forward. Judge Cooper expressed some doubt whether Ms. Beatty was automatically entitled to vote as a full board member.

She is one of more than a dozen members of Congress who sit as ex officio members under the federal law that established the Kennedy Center.

On Friday, Ms. Beatty’s lawyers filed a tax form indicating that the I.R.S. counted ex officio members among the board’s “voting members,” suggesting she has an official voice on any possible redevelopment plans.

Ms. Beatty has worked to turned a typically low-profile and ceremonial role into an adversarial one. She has argued that allies of the president installed on the board have repeatedly worked to muzzle her opposition, after she tried to assert that changes to the center must be approved by Congress.

According to the initial complaint, when the board met in December to vote to rename the institution, Ms. Beatty, who appeared virtually, tried to object but was muted by organizers. Afterward, the White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced online that the board had “voted unanimously” to approve the renaming.

In his ruling, Judge Cooper wrote that the secrecy surrounding both the agenda of the Monday meeting and the overall plans for the center appeared hard to square with the scale of the president’s stated broad ambitions.

“These are exceptional circumstances, both in the potential immensity of the announced work on the Kennedy Center and the manner in which most of its trustees have been sidelined from one of the more consequential decisions in the institution’s life span,” he wrote.

Ms. Beatty has also asked the court to issue a more permanent order barring Mr. Trump from closing and redeveloping the site. Judge Cooper has not yet considered that request.

Mr. Trump has told performers and staff that he intends to transform the space into a “new and spectacular Entertainment Complex.”

In the 37-page opinion, Judge Cooper laid out a list of documents — including budgets and planning reports — that must be sent to Ms. Beatty within 24 hours, “to the extent they exist.” He added that the government’s claims in the lawsuit that no plans had been finalized, just four days before the board could meet to approve them, “borders on preposterous.”

“This emergency order is a victory for the Congresswoman’s battle to get the truth out — and a down payment on stopping the closure and destruction of this cultural treasure,” said Norm Eisen, the co-founder of the legal group Democracy Defenders Action, who is helping represent Ms. Beatty.

Ms. Beatty sued in December, objecting to Mr. Trump’s decision to add his own name above John F. Kennedy’s on the theater’s facade. Mr. Trump also overhauled the center’s board, which then named himself chairman of the group in February.

In March, she expanded her lawsuit after Mr. Trump abruptly announced plans last month to close the center for two years beginning on July 4. Mr. Trump said the closure would allow for a “complete rebuilding,” after referring to the facility as “a tired, broken, and dilapidated center.”

Ahead of the meeting on Monday, Mr. Trump also announced that Richard Grenell, one of his close allies and advisers who was serving as president of the center, would leave the role.

Ms. Beatty’s lawyers have argued the center could be taken down at the president’s whim, after he similarly moved without warning last year to demolish the East Wing of the White House amid plans to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom in its place.

“The shell game here has been a pretense,” Nathaniel Zelinsky, a lawyer representing Ms. Beatty, said in court on Thursday. Like with the East Wing, he said “the next thing you know, the bulldozers are at the door.”

At an emergency hearing on Thursday, Judge Cooper stressed that the only questions he would address immediately centered on the upcoming board meeting.

He limited arguments to the narrow issue of whether Ms. Beatty was entitled to participate and vote. In earlier filings, Ms. Beatty’s lawyers contended that she had been excluded from the meeting entirely, though they later acknowledged that she had missed an emailed invitation when it landed in her email spam folder.

On Thursday, they argued that Ms. Beatty had nevertheless been unable to properly prepare for the meeting because details had not been shared about what was to be discussed.

Mr. Zelinsky said that the center was built as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy and as a “national landmark institution,” meaning its board had to follow rules that go beyond those followed by average nonprofit organizations.

Judge Cooper suggested similarly high stakes in pointed questions for William Jankowski, a Justice Department lawyer, who argued that there were no laws dictating how the board should conduct business.

“Why not just give her the info?” Judge Cooper asked. “How is the government harmed?”

“I’ve got to say, this is a pretty big deal,” Judge Cooper told Mr. Jankowski. “A major renovation of the nation’s premier performing arts center would strike me as something you need advance notice on.”

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