- Judge Rita Lin granted Anthropic summary judgment on its First Amendment, due process, and Administrative Procedure Act claims in a 59-page order.
- The government conceded Anthropic has no backdoor access to deployed models and is no riskier than any other AI system.
- Anthropic lost on one count, its claim that Trump’s directive to federal agencies exceeded presidential power.
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration illegally punished Anthropic for refusing to let the military use its Claude LLM for tasks including mass surveillance and lethal autonomous warfare. The dispute began when the Pentagon told Anthropic to strip all usage restrictions and accept a clause permitting “all lawful uses.”
Anthropic dropped most of them but held two red lines. On February 27, Trump ordered every federal agency to stop using the company’s technology, calling it a “RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY” on Truth Social.
Secretary Hegseth followed, accusing Anthropic in a tweet of “a master class in arrogance and betrayal” and barring any military contractor from doing business with it. The government has since abandoned its central claim that Anthropic had backdoor access to deployed models, conceding Claude is no riskier than any other “black box” system.
Lin found the timeline revealed the government’s retaliation. Days before the blacklisting, Hegseth had floated invoking the Defense Production Act, which would have made Anthropic essential to national security. The day after the designation, an under secretary emailed the company to say a contract was “very close.”
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Lin wrote. She vacated the designation and Hegseth’s boycott order, granted a permanent injunction, and denied the government’s request for a seven-day administrative stay.
Anthropic told the court the measures would cut its defense-related revenue by 50% to 100% and its 2026 revenue by billions. Lin rejected Anthropic‘s argument that Trump’s directive exceeded presidential authority, entering judgment for agencies that took no action.
✅ Follow BITNEWSBOT on Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X.com, and Google News for instant updates.
