DOJ Asks SCOTUS To End ‘Judicial Interference’ With Trump’s Firing Of Library Of Congress Official:
The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to shut down a lower court blockade against President Trump’s bid to fire a top official at the Library of Congress.
In an emergency application for stay filed on Monday, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer requested that the nation’s highest court temporarily pause an injunction issued last month by a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. That panel (2-1) attempted to block the Trump administration’s firing of Shira Perlmutter, who headed up the U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress since 2020 until her termination in May.
Perlmutter’s dismissal came shortly after Trump removed Obama-appointed Carla Hayden as Librarian of Congress. Hayden has been replaced by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is filling the position on an “acting” basis.
Following her termination, Perlmutter sued the federal government, claiming that Trump lacked the authority to implement a temporary Librarian of Congress and that only the latter can appoint and remove registers of the U.S. Copyright Office such as herself.
“In short, the President’s attempt to name Mr. Blanche as acting Librarian of Congress was unlawful and ineffective, and therefore Mr. Blanche cannot remove or replace Ms. Perlmutter,” the lawsuit reads.
In asking the Supreme Court to temporarily stay the D.C. Circuit Court’s injunction, Sauer argued that the administration’s newest application filed with the high court represents “another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s power to remove executive officers —here, the Register of Copyrights.” He specifically claimed that Perlmutter’s position is “an inferior officer appointed by the Librarian of Congress, who is, despite his title, a principal executive officer” and who “wields executive power by exercising ‘significant regulatory authority over copyrights’ … — impacting a wide array of crucial intellectual-property issues.” --->READ MORE HERE
Trump administration urges Supreme Court to overturn lower court order reinstating federal official
The Trump administration on Monday afternoon asked the Supreme Court to pause an order by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that temporarily reinstated the top U.S. copyright official after her firing earlier this year. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s power to remove executive officers.”
The head of the U.S. Copyright Office is known as the Register of Copyrights, and she is the primary adviser to Congress on copyright issues. The Register of Copyrights is housed within the Library of Congress; she is appointed by the Librarian of Congress, who is in turn nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve a 10-year term.
In October 2020, Carla Hayden, then the Librarian of Congress, appointed Shira Perlmutter to serve as the Register. On May 8 of this year, Trump fired Hayden; he later appointed Todd Blanche, the deputy U.S. attorney general who had also served as his personal lawyer, to succeed her as the Acting Librarian of Congress. On May 9, the U.S. Copyright Office released a pre-publication version of a report on artificial intelligence that made recommendations with which Trump allegedly disagreed. Perlmutter received an email the following day from the White House Presidential Personnel Office notifying her that she had been removed from her position “effective immediately.”
Perlmutter went to federal court, seeking to block her removal. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly turned down her plea for an order that would temporarily reinstate her while her challenge to her firing continued. But in an order on Sept. 10, a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit granted Perlmutter’s request.
Judge Florence Pan, joined by Judge Michelle Childs, wrote a concurring opinion in which she acknowledged the Supreme Court’s statement in Trump v. Wilcox, allowing the president to remove members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board from office while their challenges to their firings continued, that the government is more likely to be harmed when a fired official remains in office than when a wrongly fired official is removed from office. But Pan sought to distinguish Perlmutter’s case, writing that Trump’s “alleged blatant interference with the work of a Legislative Branch official, as she performs statutorily authorized duties to advise Congress, 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.” Moreover, Pan added, “Perlmutter’s removal was likely unlawful because the President has no direct authority to fire her, and his installment of an Acting Librarian of Congress was likely ineffective.”
Judge Justin Walker would have denied Perlmutter’s request. He wrote that “repeatedly, and unequivocally, the Supreme Court has stayed lower-court injunctions that barred the President from removing officers exercising executive power.” And even if the Register of Copyrights is labeled as part of the legislative branch, he argued, it is still part of the Library of Congress, which “‘is squarely a component of the Executive Branch’” – and the court’s decision in Wilcox should apply to Perlmutter as well. --->READ MORE HERE
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