SCOTUS Won't Let Trump Fire Copyright Chief

President Trump's long-running push to oust the nation's top copyright official has been blocked by the Supreme Court. In a brief order Tuesday, the justices declined—for now—to let him fire Shira Perlmutter, head of the US Copyright Office, meaning she remains in place while lower courts sort out whether the president can remove her at all, CNN reports.

• The fight turns on where her job legally sits: Trump argues the register of copyrights performs "executive functions" like dealing with foreign governments on copyright issues, and should be within his firing authority, especially after recent rulings expanding presidential control over agency heads. Perlmutter counters that her role is housed in the legislative branch under the Library of Congress and insulated from White House interference.

The dispute escalated last year when Trump allies arrived at the library with a letter claiming to take charge; officials refused and sued. Perlmutter has said she drew Trump's ire after a report suggesting AI developers might need licenses for certain copyrighted training data. When she was fired soon after the report was submitted, Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle said she had "refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk's efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models." A divided DC Circuit panel sided with Perlmutter, calling Trump's attempt to remove her "blatant interference" with a legislative officer "as she performs statutorily authorized duties to advise Congress."

The move "strikes us as a violation of the separation of powers that is significantly different in kind and in degree from the cases that have come before," Judge Florence Pan wrote, per CBS News. The court said only a Senate-confirmed Librarian of Congress can remove Perlmutter. Trump abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden days before Perlmutter was ousted last year and no successor has been confirmed. The Supreme Court emphasized Tuesday that it was not yet weighing in on who's right—only that Perlmutter keeps her job while the constitutional showdown continues.