The NewYorkTimes.com reported that the Pentagon “…acted legally and constitutionally when it labeled the artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic a security risk and barred the company from working with the U.S. government, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled on Friday.” The September 25, 2026 article entitled “Trump Administration’s Blacklisting of Anthropic Was Legal, Judges Rule” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/technology/anthropic-trump-ruling.html) included these comments from Reporter Sheera Frenkel:
In a 51-page decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Pentagon had “ample support for its conclusion” in February that the A.I. company’s products could pose a national security risk.
In addition, the court wrote, Anthropic’s First Amendment rights were not violated because the Pentagon labeled the company a risk based on terms of a government contract and not the start-up’s outspokenness.
“We reject” Anthropic’s challenges, the court wrote. The decision was made by a three-judge panel, with one judge dissenting.
The ruling leaves Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot and has become one of the highest-profile A.I. companies in the world, in an awkward position. The San Francisco company had filed two lawsuits on March 9 in response to the Trump administration’s move to label it a security risk after a contentious dispute over how A.I. could be used in war.
In the other lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Judge Rita Lin ruled last month that the government had unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic “for constitutionally protected expressive activities” after the A.I. company spoke out about how its technology should be used.
But the ruling on Friday from the Washington court means that Anthropic remains barred from working with the Pentagon.
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First published at https://www.vogelitlaw.com/blog/court-rules-that-anthropic-was-properly-blacklisted-from-the-pentagon