Judge Rules Trump Admin Illegally Blacklisted Anthropic

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A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration illegally blacklisted Anthropic, vacating government directives that had banned federal agencies and defense contractors from using the company’s AI products.

Judge Rita Lin of the US District Court for the Northern District of California found that the government unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic by designating it a supply-chain risk to national security. The designation followed Anthropic’s refusal to remove restrictions preventing its Claude AI models from being used for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance of Americans.

“The undisputed record shows that the challenged actions constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.”
- Judge Rita Lin

President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered all federal agencies to permanently stop using Anthropic’s products and banned all defense contractors from doing any business with the company, even work unrelated to the military. Lin vacated those actions and ordered the administration to rescind the directives.

A “slim” justification

Lin found the administration’s national-security rationale unconvincing. She noted that federal defendants “have now backed away from the thrust of their risk assessment,” which had alleged Anthropic held backdoor access to its technology once deployed in national-security systems. The judge wrote that it is “now clear that Anthropic undisputedly lacks any such access” and that the company’s technology is “no riskier to the national security than any other ‘black box’ artificial intelligence model.”

“Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless,” Lin wrote, using the Trump administration’s preferred name for the Department of Defense. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she added.

Anthropic filed its lawsuit in March, arguing the First Amendment gives it the right to express views publicly and to the government about the limitations of its AI services and about AI safety. The White House had responded by saying President Trump “will never allow a radical left, woke company to jeopardize our national security.”

The case has moved on two legal tracks simultaneously. Trump-appointed judges in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit denied Anthropic’s earlier emergency motion for a stay, and that court is still reviewing a parallel case while both sides continue to submit briefs. Lin, a Biden appointee, has now granted Anthropic key portions of its motion for summary judgment in the Northern District of California proceeding.

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