An attempt by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to dismiss a lawsuit against Southaven’s SpaceXAI plant was blocked by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brought suit against the company earlier this year for its use of gas turbines at the site located at 2875 Stanton Road. The group said SpaceXAI violated the Clean Air Act.
The DOJ intervened and said the NAACP’s lawsuit should be thrown out due to national security concerns. Cameron Stanley, the U.S. Department of War’s Senior Official for Applied Artificial Intelligence, called SpaceXAI’s Grok bot “one of only four proprietary state-of-the-art AI models that can support national security applications.”
On Monday, the District Court said the DOJ could not “block the case.” According to the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), the court said the DOJ could intervene, but “[w]hat the United States can and cannot do after intervention, however is another matter.”
Abre’ Conner, NAACP director of environmental and climate justice, said they along with Earthjustice and the SELC were “pleased” by the court’s ruling.
“The DOJ tried an end run to the court of appeals, but its effort did not work in its favor,” Conner said. “Our case has always been about holding polluters accountable and making sure that entities follow the law.”
SELC’s Senior Attorney Patrick Anderson called the DOJ’s arguments “deeply flawed” and said it sought to stop “communities from holding [SpaceXAI] accountable. He called the court’s ruling a “major step” for residents in North Mississippi and Memphis.
Laura Thoms, enforcement director for Earthjustice, said President Donald Trump’s administration overstepped in hopes of “denying” residents protection against “illegal pollution.”
“We will continue the fight to hold [SpaceXAI] accountable for the illegal air pollution it has been pumping out around the clock and look forward to presenting our case before the District Court,” Thoms said.
