The Trump Administration’s decision to punish Anthropic for its stance forbidding Claude’s use in domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons by identifying it as a supply chain risk to national security was “arbitrary and capricious,” a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
US District Court Judge Rita Lin said federal authorities had no legitimate reason to tell companies with government contracts that they couldn’t work with Anthropic.
“The undisputed record shows that the challenged actions constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and that Anthropic was denied the pre-deprivation process required under the Fifth Amendment,” Lin said in her ruling, calling the designation “arbitrary and capricious.”
She stressed that the government action seemed punitive, and was not based on legal and national security risks.
The government’s words and deeds “confirm that the challenged actions were based on a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government, not based on any articulable basis to believe that Anthropic would actually sabotage its model,” Lin wrote.
