What Happened When the Kennedy Center Sued a Jazz Musician — and Lost
A judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered the Kennedy Center to pay $252,479.70 to jazz musician Chuck Redd to cover his legal costs. The Kennedy Center had sued Redd after he canceled a Christmas Eve concert. Judge Tanya Jones Bosier issued the order on Monday, August 10, 2026, and gave the Kennedy Center 45 days to pay (The Guardian; The Washington Post).
To understand why the Kennedy Center had to pay, it helps to know about a kind of law called an anti-SLAPP statute. SLAPP stands for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation." These are lawsuits filed not to win a genuine legal dispute, but to scare someone into staying quiet. D.C. has a law that lets a judge throw out such lawsuits early and make the person who filed them pay the other side's legal costs. Judge Bosier used this law in June 2026 to dismiss the Kennedy Center's case against Redd. She agreed with Redd that the lawsuit was filed in response to his public expression and that the Kennedy Center had not shown it had a real, binding contract with him to perform (The Guardian; The Guardian, June 2026).
Redd canceled the concert after the Kennedy Center's board, which is controlled by people appointed by President Trump, voted to rename the institution "The Donald J Trump and The John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts" (The Guardian). Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the Kennedy Center, publicly called Redd's withdrawal a "political stunt" and threatened to seek $1 million in damages (The Guardian).
The Kennedy Center has been facing several legal problems at once. In May 2026, a federal judge ruled that the Kennedy Center's board did not have the authority to rename the institution. The judge ordered all Trump references removed from the building and its official communications (The Guardian). In a separate case, the Trump administration was stopped from closing the Kennedy Center for major renovations that were supposed to start in July and last two years. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper also asked for detailed records about how that closure would affect the venue (The Guardian).
The Kennedy Center does not plan to accept the fee order without a fight. A spokesperson said it will appeal (The Guardian).
Under D.C.'s anti-SLAPP law, if a court finds that a lawsuit was filed because someone spoke out on a public matter, the person who filed the suit has to pay the other side's legal costs. Redd canceled his concert in protest of the renaming, and the court treated that as protected expression — meaning the Kennedy Center's lawsuit was filed in response to him speaking out, not because of a broken contract.
Across several rulings, the Kennedy Center's current leadership has lost the ability to rename the institution, been blocked from closing for renovations, and now been ordered to pay the legal costs of a lawsuit the court said should not have been filed.
The fee of $252,479.70 reflects the actual cost of defending against the lawsuit. The 45-day deadline gives the Kennedy Center a set period before the court could take further steps to collect the money, though an appeal would likely pause that process until it is resolved.
The broader picture here is of an institution whose leadership has repeatedly pushed the edges of its legal authority and, so far, has been turned back at every point. The appeal will test whether the dismissal holds up, or whether the Kennedy Center can convince a higher court that it had a real contract with Redd and was not simply suing him for speaking out.
