By Blake Brittain
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Washington-based federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump from firing U.S. Copyright Office Director Shira Perlmutter while she appeals a lower court's ruling against her attempt to stop the administration from terminating her.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted Perlmutter's request to reinstate her to the position temporarily and said Trump's move to terminate her was likely unlawful.
Perlmutter's attorneys and spokespeople for the White House and Copyright Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Trump Administration fired Perlmutter by email on May 10. Her removal sparked a backlash from Democratic politicians who said that Congress had insulated the Copyright Office, a department of the Library of Congress, from political influence.
Perlmutter sued the administration on May 22, noting that it fired her one day after the office said in a report that technology companies' unauthorized use of copyrighted works to train generative artificial intelligence systems may not always be legal. Perlmutter said in her appeal that Trump later made public statements contradicting the report's conclusions, and called her firing part of an attempted "takeover" of the office.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly in Washington rejected Perlmutter's requests to preliminarily block her firing, finding she had not suffered "irreparable harm" that would justify reinstating her.
The appeals court granted Perlmutter's request on Wednesday, citing the "unusual" and "extraordinary" features of her case.
Circuit Judge Florence Pan, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, said the administration's alleged "blatant interference" with Perlmutter's duty to advise Congress on copyright issues "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."
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Mark Porter and Richard Chang)
