Shira Perlmutter Seeks Emergency Injunction Pending Appeal, Says Library of Congress Staff ‘Continue to Recognize’ Her As Register

Ex-Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter. Photo Credit: David Rice

Right on cue, fired Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter has filed for an emergency injunction pending appeal that would, among other things, enable her to resume leading the Copyright Office.

Perlmutter and her legal team submitted the corresponding motion yesterday, after a federal judge closed out July by rejecting the sought injunction. As we reported then, the court in more words found that the ex-Register, regardless of her overarching suit’s ultimate outcome, wouldn’t suffer irreparable harm without an injunction.

Team Perlmutter didn’t hesitate to push back against the determination – including by notifying the court of plans to spearhead an appeal. Enter the newest effort to obtain an injunction, which the plaintiff maintains is necessary due to the “irreparable injury” she’s allegedly suffered.

Perlmutter “has suffered a continuing and manifestly irreparable injury,” the legal text claims, including from “the usurpation of her statutory position as the administrator of the nation’s copyright system” and from an adjacent “impediment to her ability to discharge her ongoing statutory responsibilities as the lawful Register of Copyrights.”

The way the filing party sees things, the court’s aforementioned injunction-motion rejection didn’t address Perlmutter’s “argument on the merits, which leaves no doubt that the President does not have the authority to directly remove” her as Register.

(Of course, on the other side of the dispute, the Trump administration has from the outset defended Perlmutter’s removal as entirely lawful.)

“Plaintiff’s purported removal inflicts precisely the kind of irreparable harm that warrants an emergency injunction and cannot be remedied by financial payments,” the filing proceeds.

“Contrary to the Court’s assumption…[o]fficials and staff at the Library of Congress have not recognized Mr. Blanche as acting Librarian or Mr. Perkins as acting Register and continue to recognize Ms. Perlmutter as the current Register,” per the document.

Meanwhile, the just-filed motion also argues that “the President’s efforts to oust Ms. Perlmutter directly threaten the Library’s and the Copyright Office’s ability to perform their assigned functions as intended by Congress—which has not given the President authority to unilaterally appoint an acting Librarian, or to directly remove the Register.”

In other words, Perlmutter’s largely doubling down on her existing arguments, and it’ll be interesting to see how this newest injunction-battle twist unfolds.

As for the desired relief, Perlmutter is asking the court to enjoin acting Librarian Todd Blanche and acting Register Paul Perkins from “exercising the powers” of the positions. Additionally, the plaintiff is seeking confirmation that she “may not be removed from her office…absent a decision by a lawfully appointed Librarian of Congress” pending appeal.

Link to the source article – https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/08/05/shira-perlmutter-injunction-push-august-2025/