Ousted US copyright chief argues Trump did not have power to remove her

The former head of the US Copyright Office has pushed back against arguments from President Donald Trump's team that her dismissal was lawful.

Shira Perlmutter was ousted after the US Copyright Office released a report challenging the limits of the "fair use" defense used by AI companies to justify training their models on copyrighted material.

In a filing [PDF] to support her attempt to obtain a preliminary injunction this week, Perlmutter argued that her removal was unlawful and caused her immediate and irreparable harm. It said that by firing her, the Trump administration threatened her office's ability to function in the manner that Congress intended.

In May, Perlmutter was removed from office after her agency concluded that AI developers' use of copyrighted material exceeded the bounds of existing fair use doctrine. Her draft report [PDF] argued that fair use does not cover the commercial use of large volumes of copyrighted works to generate expressive content that competes in existing markets.

She later applied for an injunction to prevent her removal from the position. In response, the Trump administration replied that her emergency request for reinstatement should not be approved because such actions were within the president's authority, even when the positions in dispute fall under the legislative branch.

The administration also argued that the judge did not need to assess the merits of her case because Perlmutter couldn't prove she would suffer irreparable harm without the court's intervention.

The White House said the power to remove is aligned with the power to appoint. If there is no Librarian of Congress and the president cannot designate an acting librarian, the president's removal authority extends to inferior officers like the register of copyrights, it argued.

Perlmutter was expunged from office a few days after Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was also shown the door. Hayden was later replaced by deputy attorney general Todd Blanche and Perlmutter by deputy attorney general Paul Perkins.

In the latest filing this week, Perlmutter's legal team said the administration's claim that it had the power to remove her from an office appointed by the Library of Congress employed a "novel constitutional theory" and "sweeping assertions of power."

The Copyright Office is housed in the Library of Congress, and the librarian oversees the Copyright Office head directly, Perlmutter said. Her filing argued that "neither the law nor common sense requires" that the court should "should stand idly by and do nothing while [the Trump administration] wields unprecedented, and unlawful, authority." ®