Anthropic is suing more than a dozen federal agencies and government leaders such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, claiming that the federal government’s blacklist is illegal retaliation.
In a March 9 court filing with the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, Anthropic claims that defendants named in the lawsuit are illegally punishing Anthropic for its decision not to change the terms of use for its AI product to work with the Department of Defense.
The court filing offers background into Anthropic’s product, the large language model Claude, and its extensive work within the federal government, particularly within the Pentagon.
It discusses the events that unfolded in the disagreement about Claude use cases within DOD, particularly surrounding uses to surveil U.S. citizens and control autonomous weapons. Anthropic asserts that the government’s actions after this disagreement — primarily the designation of the company as a supply-chain risk and alleged violations of its right to due process through a lack of “core requirements” such as “adequate notice and a meaningful hearing” — are illegal and “are harming Anthropic irreparably.”
“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” the lawsuit reads. “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech. No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here. Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the Executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation.”
The lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration’s actions against Anthropic are based on pure ideological disagreement and are not due to “any legitimate procurement or security concern.” Anthropic further claims that it even attempted to support the Pentagon’s shift from Anthropic software to other, more compatible systems, further underscoring the “viewpoint-based” actions taken against the company.
“Indeed, while operating under the terms of the Usage Policy, the Department [of Defense] never previously raised any issues with its use of Claude or concerns about Anthropic’s potential interference,” the document reads. “Anthropic had only ever received positive feedback about Claude’s capabilities from its government customers.”
A separate lawsuit, filed in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, further requests a judicial review of the supply chain risk label, citing provisions in the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018.
“Anthropic petitions this Court for review because the Department of War’s actions are, among other things, a pretextual form of retaliation in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution; arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion; unsupported by the administrative record; not in accord with procedures required by law; and in excess of statutory authority,” the second filing states.
Anthropic and DOD’s failure to reach an agreement on the use of the former’s technology and the resulting governmentwide actions — namely President Donald Trump’s order for all federal agencies to cease using the technology and the Pentagon designating it as a supply chain risk — have fallen under scrutiny.
A current defense official told Defense One that it will not be easy to shift systems that had relied on Anthropic’s technologies to those of another vendor, and experts like Anthony Kuhn, a managing partner at the New York law firm Tully Rinckey, predicted that the supply chain risk designation in particular could open the Pentagon to lawsuits.
In response to the lawsuit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said the Trump administration’s goal is for the military to operate under the U.S. Constitution, “not any woke AI company’s terms of service.”
President Trump will never allow a radical left, woke company to jeopardize our national security by dictating how the greatest and most powerful military in the world operates,” Huston said in a statement to Nextgov/FCW. “The President and Secretary of War are ensuring America’s courageous warfighters have the appropriate tools they need to be successful and will guarantee that they are never held hostage by the ideological whims of any Big Tech leaders.”
Nextgov/FCW has reached out to Anthropic and the Commerce Department for comment. GSA and the Pentagon declined to comment on ongoing litigation.
