The U.S. Supreme Court postponed on Wednesday a decision on whether to let Donald Trump remove the government's top copyright official.
“The action by the justices temporarily leaves in place Shira Perlmutter as the U.S. register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office after a lower court blocked her removal by Trump while her legal challenge to the decision proceeds.
The Supreme Court's order indicated that it would issue a decision on Perlmutter's case after it hears arguments that have already been set in two other cases involving Trump's removal of a Democrat member of the Federal Trade Commission and his attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
Perlmutter was notified on May 10 by a Trump administration official that she had been fired. Her duties as the government's top copyright official have included serving as the primary adviser for Congress on copyright issues.
Trump's move to terminate Perlmutter came a day after her office circulated a report finding that some unauthorized uses of copyrighted works carried out by tech firms to train generative artificial intelligence systems may be unlawful.
Her lawyers said in legal papers that they believe Trump sought to remove her because he disagreed with the report’s findings on AI.
In mid-May, Trump also removed Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, a decision she has not legally contested.
The president then moved to replace Hayden with Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense attorney and current deputy attorney general, the No. 2 role at the Justice Department.
Blanche, in his capacity as acting head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office, acted to ratify Trump's decision to remove Perlmutter.
Perlmutter on May 22 sued to block her firing. She argued among other things that Trump lacked the authority to appoint Blanche as acting Librarian of Congress because that office is not an executive branch agency, but rather is part of the legislative branch.
The U.S. Constitution divides the powers of the U.S. government among the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
Washington-based U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, in July rejected Perlmutter's request to preliminarily block her firing, finding she had not suffered "irreparable harm" that would justify reinstating her.
On appeal, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in September embraced Perlmutter's argument and reinstated her while her case continued to play out.
Judge Florence Pan, an appointee of Democrat former President Joe Biden, wrote that Trump's attempt to remove Perlmutter amounted to an "attempt to reach into the Legislative Branch to fire an official that he has no statutory authority to either appoint or remove."
"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," wrote Pan, joined by J. Michelle Childs, a fellow Biden appointee.
The D.C. Circuit's ruling prompted Trump's filing to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the administration argued in court papers that Trump's appointment of Blanche as acting Librarian of Congress was authorized by federal law.
They also argued that Trump's power under the Constitution's Article II, which delineates presidential authority, permitted him to fire Perlmutter directly because her office is part of the executive branch.
The administration has repeatedly asked the justices this year to allow the implementation of President Donald Trump’s policies that lower courts had previously blocked.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has ruled in favor of the administration in most cases it has reviewed since Trump returned to office in January.
The court has in a series of decisions in recent months allowed Trump to remove various officials.
It has scheduled arguments in two cases involving presidential powers to remove certain types of officials, including his moves to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter.
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