The Supreme Court on Wednesday deferred a decision about whether President Trump could remove the government’s top copyright official until after the justices resolved a pair of related cases testing the president’s power to fire independent regulators.
The court’s order is a placeholder and means that Shira Perlmutter, the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, can remain in her role as an adviser to Congress at least until January. The order represents a rare departure from recent cases in which the conservative majority has allowed Mr. Trump to immediately remove agency leaders while litigation over their status continues in the lower courts.
The justices said they were putting off a decision in Ms. Perlmutter’s case until after the court heard arguments in December and January in cases testing the president’s authority to fire other government officials, despite laws generally prohibiting their dismissals that were meant to protect them from political interference.
The outcome of those cases involving the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve Board will most likely resolve the question of whether Congress can pass laws that limit the president’s power to remove regulators throughout the federal bureaucracy.
Justice Clarence Thomas noted that he would have granted the Trump administration’s request to remove Ms. Perlmutter from her post and would not have waited for the court to rule in the other matters.
In May, Mr. Trump ordered the removal of Ms. Perlmutter, the register of copyrights, and the librarian of Congress, Carla D. Hayden, who did not challenge her dismissal.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with Ms. Perlmutter, who advises Congress on national and international issues related to copyright. The majority said the role was part of the legislative branch and not within the purview of the president.
D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said in a court filing that the appeals court had improperly interfered with the president’s power to remove government officials, the same argument the administration had successfully used in other cases involving the dismissal of various officials.
The head of the copyright office, he wrote, wields significant regulatory authority affecting “a wide array of crucial intellectual property rights.”
Since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, the Supreme Court has issued a series of preliminary rulings allowing him to remove independent leaders at several agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Trade Commission.
But Ms. Perlmutter’s lawyers told the justices in a court filing that the copyright role was different because it was part of the Library of Congress, which is not an executive agency.
The administration, her lawyers told the court, was making an “inexcusable mess of Congress’s plans for the governance of its library,” and was asking for “an unprecedented expansion of executive power.”
Ms. Perlmutter, who was appointed in 2020 by the librarian of Congress, oversees the copyright office and administers the nation’s copyright system. She has produced reports on copyright law and policy, including a recent one about artificial intelligence suggesting some uses of copyrighted works in generative A.I. training were likely to require licensing.
Mr. Trump appeared to disagree with the recommendations in the report, according to court filings, and Ms. Perlmutter was notified by email the next day that she had been fired, “effective immediately.”
Mr. Trump fired Dr. Hayden, the first African American and first woman to lead the Library of Congress, in May. He then named Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, to serve in the role in an acting capacity, in addition to his position at the Justice Department.
A district court judge initially denied Ms. Perlmutter’s request to block her dismissal. The divided three-judge appeals panel in Washington reversed that order.
The majority said that the office led by the register of copyrights was not an “executive agency” subject to Mr. Trump’s control.
Ann Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Times from Washington.
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