Judge Vacates Pentagon’s Anthropic Blacklist and Orders Defense Department Retraction

A federal judge has removed the Pentagon’s supply-chain-risk designation of Anthropic, undoing a measure that barred defense contractors from using the company’s technology in Department of Defense work. The ruling places constitutional limits on the department’s response to a dispute over how Claude could be used.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin held that the Department of Defense violated Anthropic’s First Amendment rights and Fifth Amendment due-process protections. She directed the department to rescind its guidance, directives, communications, and instructions against the company.

A supplier dispute became a department-wide exclusion

The Pentagon imposed the designation in March after negotiations over military use of Anthropic’s Claude models broke down. The conflict followed Anthropic’s refusal to remove contractual limits on mass domestic surveillance and weapons that select and engage targets without human involvement.

Existing government use complicates the Pentagon’s case

Claude had already been used for intelligence analysis, operational planning, modeling, simulation, and cyber operations. The disagreement was therefore over permissible uses and contract terms, rather than whether Anthropic technology had any government role.

Lin wrote that the defendants cited Anthropic’s hostile public posture and criticism of the administration’s AI views as reasons they could not trust its models’ integrity. She concluded that neither the Constitution nor the statute the department invoked allowed sweeping penalties principally based on the company’s critique of administration views.

The remaining boundary is narrower, not yet settled

Lin had already issued a preliminary injunction on March 26, finding Anthropic likely to prevail on First Amendment retaliation, Fifth Amendment due process, and procedural claims. At the merits stage, she also found the designation violated the governing statutory framework and was arbitrary and capricious.

Anthropic’s related case in Washington, D.C., remains pending because the Pentagon used two distinct designations that must be litigated in separate courts. This ruling also does not establish whether individual federal agencies retain separate procurement or security restrictions.