Federal Judge Rules Trump Administration’s Blacklisting of Anthropic Unlawful

A federal judge has declared the Trump administration’s blacklisting of Anthropic illegal, ordering the removal of government directives that barred federal agencies and contractors from using the firm’s AI technology.

In a ruling issued yesterday, Judge Rita Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said the government unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic by labeling it a national‑security supply‑chain risk. According to the decision, the San‑Francisco‑based company, creator of the Claude AI system, had been prevented from doing business with federal agencies and defense contractors because it would not lift its prohibitions on using its technology for lethal autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of U.S. citizens.

Judge Lin wrote that “the undisputed record shows that the challenged actions constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment,” granting key portions of Anthropic’s motion for summary judgment.

The court found that President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had directed every federal agency to cease using Anthropic’s products indefinitely and had prohibited all defense contractors from engaging with the firm, even on non‑military projects. Judge Lin vacated those directives and ordered the administration to rescind them, declaring them unlawful.

National Security Cannot Be Used to Retaliate Against Critics

Judge Lin observed that while the Department of Defense is free to choose its AI vendors, the evidence showed the sweeping measures against Anthropic were both illegal and unfounded. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” she wrote.

The court noted that the administration offered only a “slim” justification, having now retreated from its original risk‑assessment claim that Anthropic possessed backdoor access to its AI once integrated into national‑security systems. The record makes clear that Anthropic has no such access, and the defendants concede that its technology poses no greater national‑security risk than any other closed‑source AI model.

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