A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration’s ban on the artificial intelligence company Anthropic was illegal and carried out in retaliation for the company’s critiques of the administration’s use of AI.

In the 59-page ruling Thursday night, Judge Rita Lin, in the Northern District of California, called the government’s evidence in the case “slim” and said federal officials’ ongoing discussions about using other Anthropic tools undermine its arguments that the company “is a saboteur who would poison its software to harm national security.”

“Neither the Constitution nor the federal statute invoked by Defendants allows them to impose sweeping penalties based principally on Anthropic’s critique of the Administration’s views,” wrote Lin, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” the judge concluded.

An Anthropic spokesperson welcomed the judge’s ruling, saying in a statement, “We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”

The Department of Defense and the White House did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment on Friday.

Anthropic has maintained that the Defense Department retaliated against the company after it refused to allow its technologies to be used for “autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans,” as department officials reportedly requested.

In late February, Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, released a statement asserting that the government’s request to use the technology to facilitate mass surveillance was “incompatible with democratic values,” and that AI was “simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.” A day later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a Pentagon ban on Anthropic and accused the company of “arrogance and betrayal” in a post on X.

The same day as Hegseth’s announcement, President Donald Trump also called for all federal agencies to discontinue using the company’s technology in a Truth Social post, leading several agencies to reportedly cut ties with Anthropic, according to the company’s legal filings.

Anthropic filed the lawsuit soon after, in early March, arguing that the government was unlawfully retaliating against the company after it refused to accede to officials’ demands. Lin temporarily blocked the Pentagon’s ban on the company a few weeks later.

Anthropic has a separate lawsuit pending in the D.C. Court of Appeals over its Pentagon ban.

Lindsey Pipia contributed to this report.

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