{"id":13089,"date":"2025-09-10T15:01:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T15:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/appeals-court-weighing-trumps-library-of-congress-takeover-reinstates-copyright-chief\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T15:01:39","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T15:01:39","slug":"appeals-court-weighing-trumps-library-of-congress-takeover-reinstates-copyright-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/appeals-court-weighing-trumps-library-of-congress-takeover-reinstates-copyright-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeals court, weighing Trump\u2019s Library of Congress takeover, reinstates copyright chief"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A federal appeals court ruled the nation\u2019s top copyright official can continue serving in her post following President Donald Trump\u2019s attempt to fire her.<\/p>\n

A divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday<\/a> that Shira Perlmutter is entitled to continue to serve as the register of copyrights at the Library of Congress, despite the White House\u2019s claim that Trump fired her from the post in May.<\/p>\n

While the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit have permitted Trump to fire a range of executive branch officials who claimed they were protected from dismissal, judges Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs concluded that Perlmutter\u2019s case was stronger because she doesn\u2019t exercise significant executive power in her job.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause Perlmutter leads an agency that is housed in the Legislative Branch and her primary role is to advise Congress, Perlmutter\u2019s situation differs significantly from the Executive Branch officials whose removals have been repeatedly upheld,\u201d Pan wrote, joined by Childs. Both are appointees of former President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Perlmutter was dismissed<\/a> days after Trump moved to fire Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who has not sought to challenge her ouster in court. The president\u2019s move onto what has traditionally been legislative branch turf has vexed Democrats and some congressional Republicans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, dissented. He said Perlmutter\u2019s claims were too similar to cases the Supreme Court ruled on earlier this year where the justices upheld, for now, Trump\u2019s power to fire members of labor-related boards<\/a> and the Consumer Product Safety Commission<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Walker wrote that the register of copyrights \u201cexercises executive power in a host of ways.\u201d He cited a D.C. Circuit ruling last year<\/a> that found the Library of Congress is part of the executive branch when it acts as a copyright regulator, but the other two judges said he overlooked Perlmutter\u2019s \u201cprominent Congress-facing duties.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal appeals court ruled the nation\u2019s top copyright official can continue serving in her post following President Donald Trump\u2019s attempt to fire her. A divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Shira Perlmutter is entitled to continue to serve as the register of copyrights at the Library of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}