Trump administration seeks to halt air pollution lawsuit against xAI data

The US government has intervened on the side of Elon Musk’s xAI in a legal dispute over the environmental impact of a $20bn data centre in Mississippi, claiming that efforts to block the project threaten national security.

In a court motion filed this week, the US Department of Justice requested the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing xAI of illegally operating dozens of natural gas turbines erected to power its Southaven, Mississippi facility.

The NAACP, the largest civil rights group for African Americans, filed the lawsuit in April under the 1963 Clean Energy Act, which allows citizens to seek injunctions and civil penalties against alleged polluters.

The NAACP alleges that xAI erected the turbines without obtaining the necessary permits, exposing hundreds of thousands of residents in Mississippi and neighbouring Tennessee to harmful pollutants linked to “increases in asthma, respiratory diseases, heart problems, and certain cancers.”

The lawsuit notes that a “much larger share” of residents are Black compared to the US general population.

In its motion filed in a US District Court on Monday, the DOJ accused the NAACP of threatening “national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.”

The motion also claims that the US Constitution vests the power to seek civil penalties “conclusively and preclusively” in the executive branch, including the “discretion to decide when such an enforcement action is unwarranted or inconsistent with federal enforcement priorities.”

Adam Gustafson, the top prosecutor at the DOJ’s environment and natural resources division, said in a statement that the governmeny would “not sit idly by while private organisations use environmental laws to undermine our national security.”