Judge says Trump’s clampdown on Anthropic violates the First Amendment

Anthropic was never a legitimate national security risk. 

That’s the takeaway from Thursday’s decision in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Judge Rita Lin ruled that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment and unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic for engaging in “constitutionally protected expressive activities” when it designated the company as a supply chain risk. Lin also found the government’s actions violate the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause “because they deprive Anthropic of constitutionally protected liberty interests without sufficient pre-deprivation notice or opportunity to be heard.” 

The legal battle between the AI firm and the government started in February, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei traded public statements about the Pentagon’s use of Anthropic’s models. Amodei refused to acquiesce to Hegseth’s demand that Anthropic’s model be “free from usage policy constraints that may limit lawful military applications.” Anthropic insisted its contract with the Pentagon include limits on using its technology for fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Hegseth then threatened to nationalize the company and label it a supply chain risk. 

When Anthropic still didn’t comply, President Donald Trump ordered every federal agency to stop using the company’s technology. Hegseth told Defense Department contractors, suppliers, and partners to cease commercial activity with Anthropic, designating it a supply chain risk.

This directive, Lin ruled, was “arbitrary, capricious, and in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations” under the Administrative Procedure Act. Hegseth, she wrote, acted “without observance of procedure required by law.”

The initial directive from Trump extending Anthropic’s designation as a supply chain risk to other federal agencies—such as the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget—was likewise vacated. Lin ruled the president had imposed these conditions “without jurisdiction delegated to those agencies and without authorization by law.”

Lin permanently enjoined the Defense Department from “implementing, enforcing, or giving effect to” Hegseth’s directive labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk. She ordered the department to rescind its previous “guidance, directives, communications, or instructions” on the supply chain designation and to take “all necessary actions” to prevent the designation from being implemented. 

Ironically, the Pentagon was undone by its own words. In her 59-page opinion, Lin states that “it is undisputed Anthropic was given high levels of security clearance and was consistently praised,” adding there was “no discussion of Anthropic’s untrustworthiness or of a potential supply chain risk anywhere in the record” until its dispute with the Defense Department became public.

It didn’t help the government’s case when the Defense Department couldn’t answer whether “terminating a contract for the undisputed sole purpose of ‘stop[ping] public criticism of the President’ would violate the First Amendment.” But federal courts have already answered that question. “Criticism of government is at the very center of the constitutionally protected area of free discussion,” Lin notes.

It’s not all roses for Anthropic. There’s still a path for the Trump administration to decouple the company’s technology from the federal government. Lin states her order doesn’t prevent the government from “taking any lawful action that would have been available” to it before issuing the designation.

Anthropic’s refusal to let its technology be used for mass surveillance was insufficient grounds to consider the company a national security threat. Government skeptics recognized that immediately, and now, thankfully, the courts have too.