// ARS TECHNICA — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Court rules Trump can blacklist Anthropic for refusing to enable Claude features
“Overly constrained AI models” could cause military operations to fail, judges say.
A US appeals court today approved the Trump administration’s blacklisting of Anthropic technology. Judges decided the US had authority to blacklist Anthropic for withholding certain AI features even if Anthropic had no malicious intent.
In a 2-1 ruling issued by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a panel of judges said the “case raises profoundly difficult questions about the appropriate military uses of an almost unimaginably powerful new technology.” The US “raises the deeply sobering prospect of overly constrained AI models shutting down unexpectedly and thus causing important military operations to fail. Anthropic raises the deeply sobering prospect of unconstrained AI models hallucinating inappropriate targets for lethal military force,” the ruling said.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “must determine how best to balance the competing risks,” the court said. “In doing so here, the Secretary did not transgress any limits on his authority under the Supply Chain Security Act or the Constitution. Accordingly, we deny the petitions for review.” The same court previously denied Anthropic’s emergency motion for a stay in April.
The two judges who ruled against Anthropic were both appointed by Trump and served in the first Trump administration. Judge Gregory Katsas was previously deputy counsel to the president, and Judge Neomi Rao served in the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget.
Anthropic sued the Trump administration in March after Trump and Hegseth ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s products and banned defense contractors from doing any business with Anthropic. Anthropic may appeal today’s ruling, either by asking for an en banc review with all of the appeals court judges or by petitioning the Supreme Court.
“We respectfully disagree with the court’s decision,” an Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC. “Another federal court has already held the government’s parallel designation unlawful. We remain confident in our position and are considering all options, including further review.” Despite the ongoing legal battle, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently said the Trump administration and Anthropic have patched up their relationship and are “in tune.”
Two courts have been reviewing the US blacklisting of Anthropic. A judge in US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled last month that the action was illegal because Anthropic does not meet the definition of a supply-chain risk, which is limited to “the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert… a covered system.”
Today’s ruling from the DC Circuit did not dispute the district court’s primary finding. But it said the district court was tasked with reviewing whether the decision was allowed under one law while the appeals court has exclusive jurisdiction to review the decision under a different, more permissive grant of authority.
The district court decision found a violation of 10 U.S.C. § 3252, in which supply chain risks are limited to malicious actions by adversaries. The appeals court reviewed the blacklisting under 41 U.S.C. § 4713, which doesn’t have the same restrictions. Notably, Congress gave the DC Circuit appeals court exclusive jurisdiction to review procurement actions taken under Section 4713 designations.