A federal judge declined to issue an order that would immediately prevent the Trump administration from firing the register of copyrights and head of the U.S. Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly denied Perlmutter’s motion for a temporary restraining order, a move that would have put the Trump administration’s efforts to dismiss her on hold. Instead, Kelly asked attorneys for a briefing schedule further proceedings to consider the merits of the case.
Earlier this month, the White House informed Perlmutter she was being dismissed, shortly after Trump fired the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden.
Perlmutter’s lawsuit called the administration’s attempts to remove her “blatantly unlawful.”
Her lawsuit stated, “Congress vested the Librarian of Congress—not the President—with the power to appoint, and therefore to remove, the Register of Copyrights. … Accordingly, the President’s attempt to remove Ms. Perlmutter was unlawful and ineffective.”
Perlmutter also claimed that Trump’s designee as the acting librarian of Congress, Todd Blanche, also could not fire her because the president “has no authority to name a temporary replacement Librarian of Congress, much less name a high-ranking DOJ official whose presence offends the constitutional separation of powers.” Blanche is Trump’s former personal attorney and deputy attorney general.
Perlmutter’s lawsuit also took issue with the administration’s stated reasons for firing Hayden. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that there were “quite concerning things” that Hayden had done “in the pursuit of D.E.I. and putting inappropriate books in the library for children.” Hayden, appointed in 2016 by President Barack Obama, was the first African American and first woman to serve in the role.
Perlmutter’s attorneys wrote of the press secretary’s comments, “Neither Ms. Leavitt nor any other administration official provided any detail or support for these claims, which are at odds with the Library’s status as a non-lending research library accessible only by those age 16 and older.”
Her lawsuit also noted that, just before she was fired, the Copyright Office issued its latest report on AI. The report concluded that while some of the uses of copyrighted material in AI training models are “fair use,” others would likely need the owner’s permission for licensing. Perlmutter was informed the next day, on May 10, that she was being terminated.
The following Monday, two Justice Department officials showed up at the Library requesting access to the Copyright Office. Brian Nieves and Paul Perkins showed an email from Blanche that they had been selected to serve in senior roles at the library. Nieves was to serve as acting principal deputy librarian of Congress, and Perkins replacing Perlmutter as register of copyrights. Staff, though, contacted Capitol Police, and the two DOJ officials left the grounds voluntarily.
Among other things, her lawsuit sought an injunction prohibiting Blanche from exercising his authority of acting library of Congress, and another prohibiting her removal.
The Trump administration defended the firings by citing the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, declaring that the Library of Congress “is not an autonomous organization free from political supervision. It is part of the Executive Branch and is subject to presidential control.” They also argued that she had not demonstrated irreparable harm, the threshold necessary for a judge to issue a temporary restraining order.
Perlmutter’s legal team responded by arguing that the Federal Vacancies Reform Act does not authorize a “takeover” of the Library of Congress, and that Trump’s team was attempting “a breathtaking and entirely novel constitutional theory.” They argue that her removal violates constitutional and statutory authority, as well as the separation of powers and appointments clause.
“Instead, Defendants fall back to the argument that, even if Plaintiff is right—and even if Defendants have no legal basis whatsoever for their actions—this Court should stand idly by and do nothing while Defendants wield unprecedented, and unlawful, authority,” they wrote.
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