A US federal judge on Thursday ruled that sanctions imposed by the Trump administration against artificial intelligence giant Anthropic in February were illegal, finding that the government had punished the company for publicly criticising the Pentagon.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision, reports AFP.
Lin barred the federal agencies named in the lawsuit from enforcing President Donald Trump’s order to stop using Anthropic’s tools and overturned Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s designation of the company as a “supply chain risk”, a status previously reserved for foreign firms.
The ruling makes permanent the temporary suspension of the sanctions ordered by Lin in March and took effect immediately. The government may appeal.
“We welcome the court’s ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful,” an Anthropic spokesperson said Thursday.
“We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”
The dispute began after Anthropic refused to allow the US military to use Claude, its AI model, for fully autonomous lethal weapons or the mass surveillance of Americans.
Trump criticised the company after it took that position. In a February social media post, he called Anthropic “a radical left, woke company” and “out-of-control.”
In Thursday’s ruling, Lin said the sanctions “were based on a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government” rather than to address a genuine threat.
The military had been using Claude across a range of classified and sensitive systems. Reports by the Wall Street Journal and Axios said the technology was also used during the January operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
The Pentagon formally imposed the supply chain risk designation in March. The move cancelled Anthropic’s military contracts and barred other Pentagon contractors from using its technology.
However, Anthropic’s legal victory is not complete.
A second sanction imposed by the Pentagon on the same day, based on public procurement regulations, remains in effect pending a court ruling in Washington. A judge there refused to suspend the measure in April.
The White House has also criticised Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s repeated warnings about the dangers of AI, including its potential impact on jobs.
Anthropic is expected to pursue a public stock market listing within weeks that could surpass SpaceX’s record Wall Street debut in June, which raised $86.2 billion.
