By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to let Donald Trump remove the government's top copyright official for now in another battle over the Republican president's targeting of federal officials.
The justices denied the Justice Department's request to lift a lower court's ruling that blocked Trump's firing of Shira Perlmutter as the U.S. register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office while her legal challenge to her removal proceeds.
The court, in an unsigned order, said its action was not a ruling on the merits of the underlying legal issue.
Perlmutter was notified in May 2025 by a Trump administration official that she had been fired. Her duties as the government's top copyright official have included serving as Congress' primary adviser 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 have said in legal papers that Trump sought to remove her from her job because he disagreed with the report's findings on AI.
Trump later that month also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. The president then moved to replace Hayden with Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense attorney and current acting U.S. attorney general.
Blanche, in his capacity as acting head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office, purported to ratify Trump's decision to remove Perlmutter.
Perlmutter 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 2025 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 2025 embraced Perlmutter's argument and reinstated her while her case continued to play out.
Judge Florence Pan, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, wrote that Trump's purported ouster of 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 Supreme Court in November 2025 postponed a decision on whether to let Trump remove Perlmutter, leaving her in place for the time being. The court said it was waiting to act in Perlmutter's case until after its rulings, issued on Monday, allowing Trump to fire Federal Trade Commission Democratic member Rebecca Slaughter but refusing to let him remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
