Kennedy Center Ordered to Pay Jazz Musician's Legal Fees After Losing Anti-SLAPP Ruling
A D.C. Superior Court judge 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. Judge Tanya Jones Bosier issued the order on Monday, August 10, 2026, giving 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 law designed to protect people from lawsuits that are filed mainly to intimidate them into silence. An anti-SLAPP law (short for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) lets a defendant ask a judge to throw out a case early if it stems from protected speech, and it can require the person who filed the suit to cover the defendant's legal costs. The dismissal turned on a basic contractual question: Kennedy Center officials had failed to show 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 called Redd's withdrawal 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).
Under the D.C. anti-SLAPP statute, a defendant who successfully argues that a lawsuit was filed in response to their expression on a matter of public concern is entitled to have the case dismissed early and to recover legal fees. The law shifts the financial burden onto the plaintiff — the party who brought the suit. In this case, Redd's cancellation of the concert, which he did in protest of the renaming, was treated as protected expression under that framework.
The sequence of rulings across both D.C. Superior Court and federal court has constrained the Kennedy Center's current leadership on several fronts at once. 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.
The fee figure of $252,479.70 is notable because anti-SLAPP fee awards in the District are typically set 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 pause collection until it is resolved.
The broader context here is an institution testing the limits of its legal authority and, across each of these rulings, failing to clear them. The appeal of the fee award will test whether the anti-SLAPP dismissal itself holds on review, or whether the Kennedy Center can persuade a higher court that its suit against Redd rested on an enforceable contract rather than on the musician's public expression.
