U.S. Federal Justice Rita Lin has ruled that the Trump government is in unlawful retaliation for its refusal to allow the military to use Claude for such purposes as mass surveillance of Americans and lethal autonomous weapons.
It's about the military.
The dispute began with the Pentagon requesting Anthropic to remove most of the restrictions and to accept the “all legitimate uses” clause. Anthropic then eased most of the restrictions, but retained two bottom lines and refused to use the model for large-scale surveillance against Americans, as well as for lethal autonomous combat.
On 27 February, Trump asked federal agencies to stop using Anthropic technology and publicly called it the “radical left, awakening company”. Subsequently, United States Secretary of Defense Hegseth also publicly criticized the company and prohibited military contractors from doing business with it.
The Government withdrew its claim of core risk.
Court records indicate that the Government initially stated that Anthropic maintained a “backdoor access” capability to the deployed model, on the basis of which it determined that it had an additional risk. Since then, the Government has acknowledged that Anthropic does not have such competence and that Claude is not more dangerous than other “black box” AI systems.
After this premise was withdrawn, the Government's remaining arguments became primarily “issue of trust”. According to a Pentagon memorandum, Anthropic's position through the media is “increasing hostile”. In the judge ' s view, this was not sufficient to support punishment at the level of national security.
The court lifted the injunction and issued a permanent injunction.
Lin supported the claim of Anthropic in its decision on page 59 on freedom of expression, due process and the Code of Administrative Procedure. She wrote that enterprises critical of the Government could not be punished or retaliated against on general national security grounds.
The judge also mentioned that, a few days before Anthropic was placed on the restricted list, Hegseth had considered the use of the Defence Production Act, which meant that the Government had at one time considered it a national security requirement. The day after the listing, a Ministry of Defence official also e-mailed that a contract between the parties was “very close to being concluded”.
Eventually, the court revoked the relevant determination and resistance orders and issued a permanent injunction. The Government requested a 7-day administrative suspension, which was rejected by the judge. The Court noted that, since March, the Government had been operating under an interim injunction without indicating what damage would have been suffered as a result.
Additional information:The Court did not support Anthropic ' s claim that the relevant Trump directive exceeded the powers of the President, and handed down judgements in favour of the Government on the part of federal agencies that had not actually acted.