by Dennis Crouch
In a significant victory for Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted her emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal, allowing her to continue serving in her role while challenging President Trump’s attempt to remove her from office. Perlmutter v. Blanche, No. 25-5285 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 10, 2025). The per curium order is a terse one paragraph, but two judges filed a detailed concurring opinion explaining why a preliminary injunction is useful in this case — writing that removal of Perlmutter “would be a grave intrusion by the President into the constitutional powers of a coordinate branch of government.” Although this is an intellectual property case, it is also fundamentally about separation of powers issues within the U.S. government — and particularly about executive control over aspects of the government in situations where Congress has attempted to reduce or eliminate Presidential power.
Although Copyright Office control may be less important to the President than other areas, I still expect an emergency application to the Supreme Court from the DOJ to overturn this ruling. The court’s order enjoins “Todd Blanche, Paul Perkins, Sergio Gor, Trent Morse, and the Executive Office of the President, and their subordinates and agents” from “interfering with appellant’s service as Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office pending further order of the court.” The district court had denied Perlmutter’s request for a preliminary injunction.
President Trump has been successful in other situations at removing statutory-protected officers – with the Supreme Court rejecting similarly preliminary injunctions in Trump v. Wilcox, 145 S. Ct. 1415 (2025), and Trump v. Boyle, 145 S. Ct. 2653 (2025). Wilcox involved the President’s removal of members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board without cause, with the Supreme Court staying lower court injunctions that would have prevented the removals. Boyle applied identical reasoning to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The statutes provide the President with authority to remove these individuals for cause – based upon “neglect of duty or malfeasance” – but President Trump argues that he has inherent power to remove any member of the administration exercising executive power. The Supreme Court did not decide the merits directly but found significant potential harm from allowing a removed officer to continue exercising executive power.
The Copyright Office situation is different because the Register serves in the Legislative Branch as part of the Library of Congress, with a primary responsibility of advising Congress on copyright matters rather than executing presidential policies. The President has no statutory removal authority over the Register. And, as far as I know, this is the first time a President has ever attempted to remover the Register in the long history of the U.S. Copyright Office.
But, the Register also has clearly administrative functions, including registering copyrights and maintaining copyright deposits, recording transfers of copyright ownership, and exercising rulemaking authority. The disagreement in the concurring and dissenting opinions focus on whether these roles constitute the exercise of substantial executive power, with the majority taking pains to distinguish Wilcox and Boyle.
While I believe the copyright issue is important, the upcoming big fight for the big banana is likely over the Federal Reserve and its ongoing independence from the other branches of government.
Extraordinary Circumstances and Separation of Powers
The concurring opinion, joined by two of the three judges, provides extensive reasoning for why this case warranted an injunction pending appeal despite the Supreme Court’s recent skepticism toward such relief in executive removal cases. Writing for the majority, Judge Pan emphasized that Perlmutter’s situation presents “unusual actions relating to the discharge itself” and “genuinely extraordinary” circumstances that distinguish it from typical removal disputes.
The judges found three factors particularly significant. First, Perlmutter “alleges an unprecedented violation of the separation of powers” where “the President removed the Register, an official in the Legislative Branch, based on his disagreement with advice that the Register provided to Congress in support of its constitutional power to formulate laws and policies concerning copyrights.” Second, the removal was “likely unlawful” because only the Librarian of Congress has authority to remove the Register. Third, “Perlmutter likely does not exercise substantial executive power.”
The court found that President Trump’s removal of Perlmutter appeared directly motivated by disagreement with the Copyright Office’s May 9, 2025 AI training report, which concluded that many current industry practices in using copyrighted works to train generative AI systems likely do not qualify as fair use. Perlmutter was terminated via email the day after the report’s release, with the court noting that “the President allegedly disagreed with its recommendations.”
Federal Vacancies Reform Act Cannot Apply to Legislative Branch
A central issue in the case involves President Trump’s reliance on the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) to install Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting Librarian of Congress, who then purportedly appointed Justice Department official Paul Perkins as acting Register. The concurring opinion concluded this approach was “likely an unavailing workaround” because the FVRA applies only to “Executive agency” positions, and the Library of Congress does not fit the statutory definition.
Dissenting View: Executive Power Is Executive Power
Judge Walker’s dissent would have found sufficient exeutive power held by the Register and would have found for the Government based upon the recent SCT decisions mentioned above.
What Now.
Although Perlmutter has been out of the office, officials at the Library of Congress have apparently not recognized Mr. Blanche as the acting Librarian of Congress. A quirk though is that recent copyright registrations have been issued without any signatures — her first act back in the office should be to retroactively sign those.
Todd Blanche?: The choice of Todd Blanche as the Acting Librarian adds another layer of controversy to this separation of powers dispute. Blanche, who was confirmed as Deputy Attorney General in March 2025, has maintained his full-time role at DOJ while Trump simultaneously attempted to install him as head of the Library of Congress — this bridging of executive and quasi-executive agencies is an important example of the administration’s disregard for traditional boundaries between government institutions. The same scenario is emerging in the Federal Reserve. But, tradition doesn’t mean it has to always stay the same.
Blanche’s background makes his involvement particularly noteworthy. Having served as Trump’s lead criminal defense attorney, including defending Trump in the New York hush money case that resulted in 34 felony convictions, Blanche clearly has close ties to the President. And now, he is the second-highest law enforcement official. In July 2025, Blanche personally and privately conducted interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted associate, at FCI Tallahassee and she was immediately transferred to a nicer prison facility.
Federal Reserve Independence: The Next Constitutional Battleground
The Perlmutter decision’s reasoning may prove consequential for the Federal Reserve, where President Trump has already fired Governor Lisa Cook (with others likely on the horizon). Unlike the Copyright Office scenario, Fed governors are unquestionably executive branch officials, but they enjoy statutory “for cause” removal protection under 12 U.S.C. § 242 and serve staggered 14-year terms specifically designed to insulate monetary policy from political interference. The Supreme Court’s footnote in Trump v. Wilcox suggested the Fed might warrant different treatment due to its “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity” status and “distinct historical tradition” dating back to the early Banks of the United States. However, this protection remains untested, and the Cook v. Trump litigation now working through the federal courts will likely force the Supreme Court to definitively rule on whether Congress can constitutionally shield Fed officials from at-will presidential removal. The stakes of this coming Fed battle dwarf the Copyright Office dispute.