A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration's blacklisting of Anthropic was illegal, citing retaliation against the AI company's refusal to drop restrictions on lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance. Judge Rita Lin of the US District Court for the Northern District of California granted partial summary judgment for Anthropic, vacating the government's actions and ordering rescission of directives. Lin wrote that the undisputed record showed unlawful retaliation violating the First Amendment, rejecting the administration's national security justification as a "slim" pretext.

She noted that officials, including Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, had ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's products and banned defense contractors from doing business with the firm. The ruling emphasized that while the government may choose its AI vendors freely, it cannot punish critics with broad measures lacking evidence. Anthropic's technology, Lin stated, is no riskier than other "black box" models, and the administration had backed away from its original claims of backdoor access.