US court: ‘Pentagon’s ban on Anthropic is unlawful’
The sanctions imposed in February by the Trump administration against the AI giant were therefore unlawful
Anthropic’s inclusion on the Pentagon’s ‘blacklist’ was unlawful. This was ruled by Judge Rita Faye Lin of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, who stated that ‘the uncontested evidence shows that the contested actions constituted unlawful retaliation in breach of the First Amendment and that Anthropic was denied the due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment prior to the adoption of the restrictive order’. According to the court documents, as set out in the nearly 60-page judgement, the judge, upholding Anthropic’s arguments, described the restriction imposed on the company as ‘arbitrary and capricious’.
The ruling also emphasises ‘the absence of any substantive challenge to the fact that the decision’ by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth ‘to classify Anthropic as a supply chain risk breached the existing regulatory framework’. The sanctions imposed in February by the Trump administration against the AI giant were therefore unlawful, seen as a punishment for the company having publicly criticised the Pentagon. ‘The unfounded invocation of national security does not constitute a blank cheque to punish and retaliate against the government’s critics,’ the judge remarked, prohibiting the federal agencies named in the case from implementing President Trump’s order to cease using the tools of Anthropic, the creator of the Claude AI models, and overturned Hegseth’s decision to classify the company as a ‘supply chain risk’ – a status previously reserved for foreign firms.
The ruling makes the temporary suspension of sanctions ordered by the judge in March final and comes into effect immediately. The government, however, may appeal. “We welcome the court’s decision that the supply chain risk classification was unlawful,” said a spokesperson for Anthropic, adding that “we remain focused on productive collaboration with the government to harness AI for national security purposes, so that all Americans can benefit from this technology”. The dispute arose after Anthropic refused to allow the US military to use Claude for fully autonomous lethal weapons or for the mass surveillance of American citizens.
