Key facts
- The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from removing Shira Perlmutter, the U.S. Register of Copyrights.
- Perlmutter's legal challenge argues Trump lacked the authority to appoint the acting Librarian of Congress who ratified her firing.
- The Supreme Court's decision is not a final ruling on the merits of the case.
- The ruling allows Perlmutter to remain in her position while her legal challenge continues.
- The Supreme Court also blocked Trump from removing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from removing Shira Perlmutter, the government's top copyright official, while her legal challenge against termination proceeds. The Justice Department had requested the Supreme Court lift a lower court's ruling that blocked Perlmutter's firing.
Perlmutter was notified of her termination in May 2025 by a Trump administration official. Her lawyers contend that Trump sought her removal due to her office's report finding that some unauthorized uses of copyrighted works by tech firms for AI training may be unlawful. Trump later fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and moved to replace her with Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense attorney and current acting U.S. attorney general. Blanche, in his capacity as acting head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office, then purported to ratify Trump's decision to remove Perlmutter.
Perlmutter sued, arguing that Trump lacked the authority to appoint Blanche as acting Librarian of Congress because the office is part of the legislative branch, not the executive branch. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly initially rejected her request for a preliminary injunction, but a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later reinstated her. Judge Florence Pan, writing for the majority, stated that Trump's action was an attempt to reach into the legislative branch to fire an official he had no statutory authority to remove.
The Supreme Court's denial is not a ruling on the merits of the underlying legal issue. The court had previously postponed a decision on the matter, waiting for rulings in related cases concerning Trump's ability to fire other federal officials.
In a separate, landmark ruling on the same day, the Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump from dismissing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The five-to-four decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled that Trump cannot fire Cook as a Fed governor, a post she has held since 2022. The ruling found that Congress curbed presidential power to fire Fed officials "for good reason," setting a precedent for presidents to remove Fed members only for cause.