Supreme Court won’t let Trump boot top copyright official, for now

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court will allow the nation’s top copyright official to retain her post for now, deferring President Donald Trump’s request on Wednesday to exert control over the office that advises Congress on issues like artificial intelligence.

In a short order, the high court indicated that it wouldn’t rule on Trump’s pending emergency appeal to nix the official’s reinstatement until hearing arguments on other executive branch terminations in December and January.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, indicated that he would have granted Trump’s request.

Shira Perlmutter was reinstated as the register of copyrights by a lower court after she was fired, following a report from the U.S. Copyright Office said some uses of copyrighted works in generative AI training could run afoul of fair use laws.

“Today, the administration’s unlawful executive overreach was not greenlit by the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, the group representing Perlmutter.  “We are pleased that the court deferred the government’s motion to stay our court order in a case that is critically important for rule of law, the separation of powers, and the independence of the Library of Congress.”

Trump filed an emergency application in October seeking Perlmutter’s removal, saying the justices had previously recognized that allowing removed officers to exercise executive power over the president’s objection would result in irreparable harm.

Nearly half a dozen of Trump’s emergency appeals have concerned terminating government officials he sees as opposing his agenda, including independent labor and employment dispute board members, product safety and federal trade commissioners, a government watchdog and a federal reserve governor.

The register of copyrights is an under-the-radar position that supervises copyright claims and advises Congress on copyright issues. In his emergency appeal, Trump said that Perlmutter was using executive power over copyrights affecting a wide array of crucial intellectual-property issues.

Major tech companies, like OpenAI and Meta, are facing mounting litigation from actors, authors, newspaper publishers and more who say their copyrighted works have been improperly used to train the companies’ AI models.

In late May, Perlmutter filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s authority to fire her. She argued that the Library of Congress wasn’t an executive agency under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. A divided panel on the D.C. Circuit restored Perlmutter to her office, finding that the librarian and register were legislative officers — outside of Trump’s executive branch authority.

Only the librarian of Congress could fire a director of the U.S. Copyright Office, Perlmutter argued. Before Perlmutter’s termination, Trump fired Carla Hayden, who had been serving as the Librarian of Congress. Trump assigned the role to his former personal lawyer and current deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, adding acting librarian of Congress to his resume.

Perlmutter said Trump’s application made “an inexcusable mess of Congress’ plans for the governance of its library.” She urged the justices to reject the president’s “lawless executive action,” stating that it would upend the status quo.

Trump railed against the lower court, calling the ruling another instance of “improper judicial interference with the president’s power to remove executive officers.” Allowing a removed officer to continue exercising authority, the White House said, was a greater risk to the government than a wrongfully removed officer unable to perform their duties.

“The traditional remedy for the unlawful removal of an executive officer is back pay, not a preliminary injunction granting interim reinstatement,” Sauer wrote, quoting an opinion from Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee. “Even assuming that respondent could obtain some form of reinstatement remedy at the end of the litigation — an issue the court need not decide now — the interim relief granted here is plainly unlawful.”

The Supreme Court has ceded significant authority on executive firing decisions to Trump, despite decades of precedent to the contrary. So far, the justices have only addressed issues over executive terminations on the emergency docket, but in December, the high court will hear arguments on the merits.

However, Trump pushed the justices to add a related question to their merits docket: whether courts can return terminated officials to their posts before litigation has completed.

Follow @KelseyReichmann Follow @kelseyreichmann.bsky.social