District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier, a Biden appointee, on Friday tossed out a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by the Kennedy Center against jazz musician Chuck Redd.
The judge ordered the Kennedy Center to pay all of Redd’s legal fees and court costs after ruling there was no signed contract and that the case qualified as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) under D.C. law.
As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in December 2025, Redd abruptly canceled his long-running free Christmas Eve Jazz Jam after the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted unanimously to rename the facility the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
The board acted to honor President Donald Trump’s transformative work in saving and revitalizing the once-troubled national performing arts center.
Former Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell called the cancellation exactly what it was: a “political stunt.” He sent Redd a letter giving “official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt” that harmed the nonprofit and the families who counted on the free Millennium Stage holiday tradition.
Now Judge Bosier has ruled the lawsuit itself was improper political retribution.
The Guardian reported:
Redd’s lawyers confirmed that the suit had been dismissed by a judge, and the musician told the Associated Press he was “very pleased” by the ruling.
Last week, another judge ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the facade and website of the center, ruling that the performing arts venue, designated as a living memorial to the late president by Congress, cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.
[…]
On Friday, DC superior court judge Tanya Jones Bosier said Kennedy Center officials had failed to show they had made a legally binding agreement with Redd to perform and there was no contract in force to breach.
“I could not find a valid breach-of-contract claim here,” Jones Bosier said before dismissing the lawsuit, according to the Washington Post. “There’s no dispute that he did not sign the 2025 agreement.”
The judge granted Redd’s motion to dismiss under the District of Columbia’s anti-Slapp (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) law, designed to stop legal action being taken just to silence opposing points of view on matters of public interest.
“The Center sued Mr Redd because he publicly and rightly objected to adding Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to former President John F Kennedy,” Lisa J Banks, one of Redd’s lawyers, said in a statement. “The lawsuit against Mr Redd was political retribution, pure and simple, by the Trump Kennedy Center, and the Court correctly saw it as such in dismissing the case with prejudice.”
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