Anthropic PBC v. United States Department of War
Issue
Whether the Department of War's designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" under 41 U.S.C. § 4713 — issued in retaliation for Anthropic's refusal to remove safety constraints from its Claude AI system that prohibited use for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance — violates the First Amendment's prohibitions on compelled speech, viewpoint-based retaliation, and government coercion of private expressive choices.
What Happened
Anthropic petitioned the D.C. Circuit for judicial review of the Department of War's § 4713 supply chain risk designation and filed an emergency motion for a stay pending review. Amici curiae — including FIRE, EFF, the Cato Institute, Chamber of Progress, and the First Amendment Lawyers Association — filed this brief in support of that stay motion, arguing two independent First Amendment violations: first, that Anthropic's human-authored usage policies and Claude's designed safeguards constitute protected expression under *Moody v. NetChoice*, such that the government's demand to alter those safeguards amounts to compelled speech; and second, that senior Pentagon officials' public statements demonstrate that the designation was transparently retaliatory against Anthropic's ideological dissent rather than grounded in any genuine security concern. Amici further argue that the use of AI for domestic surveillance raises independent First Amendment chilling-effect concerns warranting the stay.
Why It Matters
This filing presents what may be the first appellate-level First Amendment challenge to government action coercing an AI developer to modify its model's content and safety constraints, directly testing whether an AI system's trained outputs and a developer's usage policies constitute protected speech and editorial judgment under *Moody v. NetChoice*; the court's resolution could establish whether and how the First Amendment limits the government's ability to condition procurement relationships on an AI company's willingness to remove safety guardrails.
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