The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it will wait until two other cases before the justices are resolved before deciding whether to allow the Trump administration to fire Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter.
The brief, unsigned order defers a decision on the emergency docket petition until the cases Trump. v. Slaughter, a merits docket case over whether the president may fire an FTC commissioner without cause, and Trump v. Cook, an emergency docket case over President Donald Trump’s bid to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook for cause, are decided. The Slaughter case is scheduled for oral arguments on Dec. 8, while the high court will hold a hearing in the Cook case on Jan. 21, 2026.
The ruling means Perlmutter will be permitted to remain at her post, which an appeals court reinstated her to in September, pending those two cases. The brief order notes Justice Clarence Thomas would have granted the Trump administration’s request to allow the firing of Perlmutter in the interim now, rather than wait for the other cases.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices last month to permit the administration to remove Perlmutter in the interim, arguing an appeals court erred in ruling that the register of copyrights was exercising functions of the legislative branch rather than the executive branch and that, therefore, Trump had no authority to fire her.
The Supreme Court has given the green light for Trump to fire independent agency heads in three previous emergency docket cases this year, elevating the third case – Slaughter – for full merits arguments next month.
With the Slaughter case, the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn the 90-year precedent established in the case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States. In Humphrey’s Executor, the Supreme Court ruled in 1935 that then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt could not fire an FTC commissioner at his discretion and could only fire a commissioner “for cause,” as outlined in the law passed by Congress authorizing the creation of the FTC.
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The high court has handed the Trump administration multiple wins on its emergency docket this year, including by allowing the firing of independent agency heads and mass layoffs throughout the government, but it held off on ruling on their request for only the second time in recent months. The other Trump emergency docket case where the justices deferred a ruling came in the Lisa Cook case, where the Supreme Court made the unusual move of scheduling a hearing on the petition.
The administration is still awaiting an emergency docket ruling on its bid to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, an order that could have wider ramifications for similar court battles over troop deployments in Portland and Los Angeles.