The United States Department of Justice is under heavy scrutiny after intervening in a lawsuit against Southaven’s xAI plant, known as Colossus 2.
On Monday the DOJ filed a motion for the suit brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) against xAI, saying the lawsuit should be thrown out due to security concerns. NAACP’s lawsuit is against xAI’s use of gas turbines for its Southaven site, located at 2875 Stanton Road. The group took legal action against the company due to its violations of the Clean Air Act.
Since filing the suit in April, the NAACP and partners have become aware that the company increased the number of gas turbines. With the total number of “unpermitted turbines” now at 59, the NAACP filed a motion last week to add the additional information to their suit.
According to the DOJ’s motion, interference with “AI adoption” by previous administrations “fostered dangerous dependencies” and caused issues for the military. They argue that the NAACP’s suit has prompted national security concerns — a claim made by Cameron Stanley, the Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Financial Officer, who called xAI’s Grok bot “one of only four proprietary state of the art AI models that can support national security applications.”
“[The] NAACP threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of [Defense]’s military operations,” court documents said.
The Southern Environmental Law Center, who, along with Earthjustice, represent NAACP in the lawsuit, said this is an attempt to remove power from “local communities, the courts, and Congress and consolidate it with the Trump administration.”
“The attempted power grab by the Department of Justice has implications that go far beyond Memphis and North Mississippi,” the SELC said in a statement. “The Department of Justice is indicating that it has the right to come in and cancel such community-led suits at any time.”
State Representative Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis) condemned the motion as an extension of President Donald Trump’s administration to use the government against citizens. He called the DOJ’s national security claims a “fear-mongering cop-out”, and said xAI’s Clean Air Act violations are the real threats to national security. “If a court grants the DOJ’s motion, it will leave millions of Americans defenseless against greedy billionaires and corporations,” Pearson said. “It will open up the floodgates for abuse and reckless disregard for human life and the planet.”
Laura Thoms, director of enforcement for Earthjustice, said there is no legal or moral precedent for the DOJ’s involvement, and accused the administration of protecting tech companies at the cost of the community. “This isn’t about national security; it’s a desperate attempt to protect wealthy tech companies from obeying the laws meant to protect people from pollution — turning our communities into sacrifice zones so companies can build and profit from data centers quicker,” Thoms said.
