Supreme Court Declines Trump’s Request to Fire Copyright Office Chief

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to uphold President Donald Trump’s firing of Shira Perlmutter, the director of the U.S. Copyright Office.

The court did not explain the reasons behind its June 30 order in Blanche v. Perlmutter, but said the denial of the federal government’s application “is not a ruling on the merits of the legal issues presented in the litigation.” No justices dissented.

The ruling leaves open for now the question of whether the president may remove officials from the Copyright Office, which is housed within the Library of Congress, itself a part of the legislative branch of the federal government. The issue could return to the Supreme Court again at some point in the future.

Trump fired Perlmutter on May 10, 2025. She sued the Trump administration, arguing that the termination violated federal law.

Perlmutter argues that Trump did not have the power to fire her because he did not appoint her to the position, and her office is not part of the executive branch.

The Copyright Office, a department within the Library of Congress, registers copyright claims, stores information about copyright ownership, gives information to the public, and helps Congress and other government offices with copyright-related matters. The president appoints the head of the library, known as the librarian of Congress, and has the authority to fire that official.

The librarian of Congress, in turn, appoints the head of the Copyright Office, who is known as the register of copyrights.

Although the Library of Congress is part of the legislative branch of the federal government, the Trump administration argues the president is allowed to fire Perlmutter because she exercises executive branch powers by issuing regulations and enforcing copyright law.

The president also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on May 8, 2025, two days before removing Perlmutter. Hayden did not challenge her dismissal.

On May 12, 2025, the president appointed as acting librarian Todd Blanche, the deputy U.S. attorney general who became acting attorney general on April 2 of this year. Perlmutter argues the appointment is unlawful because the Library of Congress is not an executive agency and is not governed by the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.

Perlmutter, who was appointed by Hayden in 2020, said Trump’s decision to install Blanche violated separation-of-powers principles and usurped Congress’s authority. The separation of powers is a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.

Perlmutter also alleges that Blanche’s designation of U.S. Department of Justice official Paul Perkins to assume her position had no legal basis.

A federal district court declined to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the firing of Perlmutter. Later, a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit granted an injunction, restoring Perlmutter to the office while the lawsuit played out.

The circuit court held in its Sept. 10, 2025, ruling that Perlmutter’s removal was “likely unlawful.”

“The Librarian of Congress—not the President—is authorized by the statute to appoint the Register,” the court said.

“The President’s purported removal of the Legislative Branch’s chief adviser on copyright matters, based on the advice that she provided to Congress, is akin to the President trying to fire a federal judge’s law clerk.”

The advice to which the court referred was Perlmutter’s release of a report on using copyrighted materials to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. Perlmutter was fired the day after she released the report.

Perlmutter’s lawsuit came nearly two weeks after the Copyright Office unveiled the report saying that some uses of copyrighted material to train generative AI systems may require licensing under U.S. law. The report, issued under Perlmutter’s leadership, found that although some AI training could qualify as “fair use,” other training likely would not.

The president “allegedly disagreed” with the recommendations in the report, the ruling said, and the following day—a Saturday—the White House informed Perlmutter that she was removed from her post “effective immediately,” the court said.

The federal government’s emergency application that was filed with the Supreme Court in October 2025 sought to uphold Perlmutter’s firing after the D.C. Circuit ruled against the government.

On Nov. 26, 2025, the Supreme Court put off ruling on whether Trump may fire the copyright office director until after it ruled on the president’s firing of two members of independent agencies.

The high court said at that time that the government’s application to stay the D.C. Circuit’s ruling keeping Perlmutter in office was “deferred” until the justices rule on Trump’s firing of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member Rebecca Slaughter and Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented at the time, saying he would have granted the application. He did not explain why.

On June 29 of this year, the nation’s highest court ruled that the president could fire Slaughter but not Cook.

Slaughter and Cook are considered to be what the U.S. Constitution’s appointments clause describes as principal officers, meaning high-ranking federal officials who exercise significant authority under the laws of the United States. A principal officer is nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The justices expanded the president’s ability to fire members of federal entities—but indicated that limits on that power remain in place. Before the ruling, courts had generally held that top-level officials at independent regulatory agencies such as the FTC could not be fired by the president, except for cause.

The court affirmed Trump’s authority to fire Slaughter, overruling a 1935 precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor that limited presidential power to dismiss senior officials at those agencies.

Trump hailed the decision as a “Historic and Unprecedented Ruling.”

However, the court made clear in Trump v. Cook that this presidential firing power has boundaries.

In that ruling, a majority of the court refused to grant Trump’s request to fire Cook as litigation proceeded in the lower courts. The decision suggested that the Constitution required some kind of due process for removing officials such as Cook.

Perlmutter’s lawsuit remains pending in the federal district court.