Kennedy Center Ordered to Pay $252,479 in Legal Fees to Musician Chuck Redd After Anti-SLAPP Dismissal
D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier has ordered the Kennedy Center to pay $252,479.70 in legal fees and costs to jazz musician Chuck Redd, closing a chapter in the institution's lawsuit against the artist over a canceled Christmas Eve concert. The order, issued Monday, August 10, 2026, gives the Kennedy Center 45 days to comply (The Guardian; The Washington Post).
The fee award follows Judge Bosier's June 2026 dismissal of the Kennedy Center's suit against Redd. She ruled in his favor under the District of Columbia's anti-SLAPP statute, a legal mechanism designed to protect individuals from lawsuits intended to silence public expression. The dismissal turned on a threshold contractual question: Kennedy Center officials had failed to demonstrate that they had formed a legally binding agreement with Redd to perform (The Guardian; The Guardian, June 2026).
Redd's cancellation came after the Kennedy Center's Trump-controlled board voted to rename the institution "The Donald J Trump and The John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts" (The Guardian). Trump-appointed Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell publicly characterized Redd's withdrawal as a "political stunt" and threatened to seek $1 million in damages (The Guardian).
The broader legal landscape around the Kennedy Center has been unsettled for months. In May 2026, a federal judge ruled that the Kennedy Center board lacked the authority to rename the institution and ordered all Trump references removed from the building and its official communications (The Guardian). Separately, the Trump administration was blocked from closing the Kennedy Center for major renovations that had been planned to begin in July and last for two years. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper also requested detailed documentation about how that planned closure would affect the venue (The Guardian).
The Kennedy Center does not intend to accept the fee award quietly. A spokesperson for the organization said it will appeal (The Guardian).
The DC anti-SLAPP statute under which Judge Bosier ruled provides a mechanism for early dismissal of suits that arise from protected speech activity, and it entitles successful defendants to recovery of legal fees. The statute shifts the financial burden onto the plaintiff when a court finds the lawsuit was filed in response to expression on a matter of public concern. Redd's cancellation of the concert, in protest of the renaming, was treated as such protected expression.
The sequence of rulings across both D.C. Superior Court and federal court has constrained the Kennedy Center's current leadership on multiple fronts simultaneously. The institution has been unable to enforce its preferred name change, blocked from pursuing its renovation closure timeline, and now ordered to bear the legal costs of a suit that the court found should not have been brought under the anti-SLAPP framework.
The fee figure of $252,479.70 is notable in that anti-SLAPP fee awards in the District are typically calibrated to reflect the actual costs of mounting the defense. The 45-day compliance window gives the Kennedy Center a defined period before further enforcement proceedings could follow, though an appeal would likely stay collection pending its resolution.
What remains is an institution navigating a legal perimeter that its leadership has repeatedly tested and, across each of these rulings, failed to clear. The appeal of the fee award will test whether the anti-SLAPP dismissal itself holds on review, or whether the Kennedy Center can persuade an appellate court that its suit against Redd rested on enforceable contractual grounds rather than on the musician's public expression.
