Cybersecurity Policy Report, Administration Appeals Anthropic Injunction in Ninth Circuit, (Apr 3, 2026)
The Trump administration is appealing a federal district court ruling that blocked moves by the administration to cancel the contracts of Anthropic and designate the AI (artificial intelligence) developer a threat to national security.
The administration yesterday notified the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that it would appeal the preliminary injunction imposed last week by Judge Rita Lin (CPR, March 27).
The appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was assigned a case number (26-2011), but the docket contained no documents as of today. Either nothing has been filed or the case has been sealed, according to a notice.
Judge Lin’s order imposing the injunction suggested that Anthropic had been targeted by the White House over its outspoken opposition to the use of its AI technology for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. The Department of Defense had insisted that Anthropic’s DoD contract couldn’t restrict how it used Anthropic’s AI.
In court documents, the administration said it canceled Anthropic’s DoD contracts and designated it as a national security risk, which would prevent the company from getting any government contracts, out of concern that Anthropic’s dispute with DoD might lead it to engage in sabotage of DoD systems (CPR, March 19).
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