Trump administration fires US Copyright Office director days after AI training report

Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter was removed from her post by email on May 10, 2025, one day after her office published the third part of a report on generative AI and copyright law that found training on copyrighted works “goes beyond” established fair-use precedent in some circumstances, particularly where the works were obtained through piracy. The dismissal came two days after President Trump had fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who oversaw the Copyright Office, by the same method.

Perlmutter sued the administration, arguing that only Congress — not the president — has the constitutional authority to remove the Register of Copyrights, and that the White House also lacked power to install an acting Librarian of Congress who could then attempt the firing on the administration’s behalf. Her complaint called the removal “blatantly unlawful.” The administration did not publicly link the firing to the AI report, but the timing prompted immediate speculation from lawmakers — Democratic members of Congress publicly questioned the move — and analysts noted the report’s findings ran counter to arguments AI companies had been making in ongoing copyright litigation.

The case became one of several in 2025 testing the limits of presidential removal power over agencies that sit inside the legislative branch. A federal appeals panel later found, in a split ruling, that Trump lacked authority to unilaterally remove and replace the Copyright Office director, though the dispute over who could act as Register continued into the following months. The episode placed the Copyright Office’s own institutional independence into the same argument it had just weighed in on: how AI companies’ use of copyrighted material should be treated under the law.