A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s decision to blacklist Anthropic was unlawful, overriding government directives that restricted the company’s use of artificial intelligence technology.
According to the court ruling, the government illegally retaliated against Anthropic by designating the AI company as a national security supply-chain risk. Judge Rita Lin of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California found that Anthropic was targeted after refusing to remove safeguards limiting the use of its Claude AI systems for lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of US citizens.
“The undisputed record shows that the challenged conduct was unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment,” Lin wrote in an order granting key parts of Anthropic’s motion for summary judgment.
Lin said President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products indefinitely. The directives also prohibited defense contractors from doing business with Anthropic, including contractors with no direct connection to the military.
In a separate order, the judge condemned the government’s actions and instructed the Trump administration to rescind the directives she found unlawful.
Judge says national security cannot justify retaliation
“While the Department of the Army is indisputably free to choose any AI vendor, the evidence shows that the sweeping measures imposed on Anthropic are unlawful and unfounded,” Lin wrote, referring to the Trump administration’s preferred name for the Pentagon.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she added.
Lin also said the administration had offered only “slim” justifications for its actions. Federal officials later abandoned an argument that Anthropic posed a unique risk because it could allegedly access AI systems deployed in national security environments.
According to the judge, it was undisputed that Anthropic did not have such backdoor access. The government also acknowledged that Anthropic’s AI technology was not inherently more dangerous to national security than other so-called “black box” artificial intelligence models.
Source: arstechnica.com