xAI, under Elon Musk, receives DOJ support from the Trump administration to continue operating gas turbines in Mississippi to power the Colossus data center.
The Trump administration's Department of Justice has taken action to protect Elon Musk's xAI from civil rights litigation, asking federal courts to allow the company's unapproved gas turbines to continue operating near Black-majority communities in northern Mississippi.
The Justice Department filed documents on June 15, 2026, to intervene in a Clean Air Act case brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and subsequently asked the court to dismiss the case. Government lawyers argued that shutting down the turbines would harm national security because they power Grok, an artificial intelligence model that the Pentagon stated it now relies on.
Lawyers for affected residents called the move a seizure of power unprecedented in modern environmental enforcement.
The NAACP and its Mississippi chapter filed suit against xAI and its subsidiary MZX Technology Company on April 14, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Their complaint describes 27 gas turbines installed at a facility located at 2875 Stanton Road South in South Haven, which were installed between August and December 2025 to power the Colossus 2 data center approximately one mile from Memphis.
The litigation documents borrowed the tech industry's own motto, accusing the company of attempting to "move fast and break rules" while violating the Clean Air Act, which requires major pollution sources to obtain permits before operating. The complaint noted that the proportion of Black residents living around the factory was significantly higher than the national average, explicitly placing the case within the NAACP's environmental justice work.
These 27 turbines alone could emit more than 1,700 tons of nitrogen oxides that form smog annually, potentially becoming the largest industrial pollution source in the greater Memphis area. This is not the first time xAI has caused conflict locally over unapproved power facilities, as the historic Black community of Boxtown in South Memphis has already fought similar turbines at the Colossus 1 facility less than 10 miles away.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to shut down the South Haven facility, order the implementation of best available pollution control measures, and impose fines of up to £94,200 ($124,400) per day of violation. As xAI continued to add units rather than seek permits, the NAACP requested a preliminary injunction in May, with court filings showing that by mid-month, the number of turbines had increased to 57.
The Justice Department's Environmental and Natural Resources Division told the court that the lawsuit threatened "U.S. national, economic and energy security" by attempting to cut power to artificial intelligence operations supporting military operations. Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, made a sworn statement that Grok is one of only four frontier models capable of supporting national security applications across classified networks.
Stanley wrote that the model is connected to the Maven Intelligence System and helped U.S. forces conduct military operations against Iran by delivering more than 2,000 munitions to 2,000 different targets within 96 hours. He warned that losing power to the data center would weaken the U.S. military's ability to keep pace with its adversaries.
Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves supported the company with his own letter, urging the judge to "protect these vital state and national interests" and citing xAI's approximately £15 billion ($20 billion) investment in the state. xAI separately seeks to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the NAACP lacks standing and claiming that Mississippi regulators have classified its portable turbines as mobile pollution sources that do not require permits.
The company also argues that the Clean Air Act's citizen suit provision violates the Constitution because enforcement authority should be held solely by the executive branch. These filings came just days after SpaceX completed the largest initial public offering in history, after SpaceX acquired xAI in February.
Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represent the NAACP, called the government's move a "massive seizure of power" aimed at undermining tools communities have been using for over 50 years. It is unusual for the federal government to stand with those accused of pollution rather than enforcing the law itself.
Citizen suits allow residents to enforce environmental laws when regulators fail to act, and the lawyers warn that the administration's rationale would allow any government to protect its favored polluters. They emphasize that the Justice Department has never denied that the pollution violates the law, only that the government should be free to allow the pollution to continue.
Residents near the South Haven facility also filed a separate class action lawsuit this month, suing over the near-constant noise and vibration generated by the turbines. Aburazey Konna, who leads the NAACP's environmental and climate justice work, said on Democracy Now that communities themselves should decide what happens to the air they breathe, and warned against what she called authoritarian rule. A hearing on the preliminary injunction is expected within weeks, and the court has not yet ruled on the intervention or dismissal motions.
For families breathing exhaust on Stanton Road, the struggle is no longer just about what xAI built, but about whether anyone has the power to make it stop.