The Trump administration is asking a federal court to throw out an xAI pollution lawsuit over natural gas turbines tied to Elon Musk’s planned $20bn Colossus 2 data centre in the Memphis area, arguing that the case could disrupt power for artificial intelligence tools used by the US military.
The United States Department of Justice filed the motion this week in US District Court, intervening on xAI’s side in a fight brought by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The civil rights group says xAI illegally built and operated dozens of turbines without the permits required under federal air pollution law.
What the lawsuit says xAI did
The NAACP filed the case in April under the 1963 Clean Air Act, which allows citizens and groups to seek court orders and civil penalties against alleged polluters.
At issue are natural gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, built to supply power to the Colossus 2 data centre in nearby Memphis, Tennessee. The NAACP says xAI did not obtain the necessary permits before constructing and running the equipment.
The group argues the turbines expose hundreds of thousands of residents to pollutants associated with “increases in asthma, respiratory diseases, heart problems, and certain cancers”. The complaint also notes that the affected area has a “much larger share” of Black residents than the United States as a whole.
In practice, this is not just a paperwork dispute. Permits are the system regulators use to measure emissions, set limits, require controls, and give communities a chance to challenge industrial projects before the exhaust starts.
Why the Justice Department wants it dismissed
In its Monday filing, the Justice Department said the NAACP’s case threatens “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 department also made a broader constitutional argument. It claimed the power to seek civil penalties belongs “conclusively and preclusively” to the executive branch, including the discretion to decide when enforcement would be unwarranted or inconsistent with federal priorities.
That is a significant position because the Clean Air Act specifically gives private citizens and organizations a role in enforcement. The DOJ’s version would sharply limit that backstop when the administration decides a case conflicts with its own priorities. Convenient, if you happen to be the company on the other side of the complaint.
Adam Gustafson, the top prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said the government would “not sit idly by while private organisations use environmental laws to undermine our national security”.
xAI, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Environmental lawyers call it a power grab
Earthjustice, which represents the NAACP in the case, accused President Donald Trump’s administration of trying to protect Musk’s company from normal enforcement.
“Trump’s Justice Department wants to shield Elon Musk’s data center company, xAI, from being held accountable for its illegal pollution – and it’s attempting to grab power from impacted communities, the courts, and Congress to do so,” Laura Thoms, Earthjustice’s director of enforcement, said in a statement.
“There is no moral or legal precedent for this.”
Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, described the government’s argument as a “brazen attempt” to restrict Clean Air Act enforcement.
“It’s based on a radical notion that the executive branch can dismiss lawsuits brought by citizen groups that Congress has authorised based on no rationale at all,” Carlson told Al Jazeera. She said the position would let “polluters off the hook even for blatant violations of the law”.
Carlson added: “This motion is also just one of many ways in which the administration is undermining efforts to protect air quality.”
How the Pentagon factors into the case
The administration’s national security argument is tied to xAI’s Grok model and the Pentagon’s push to become what officials call an “AI-enabled fighting force”. Trump has maintained close ties with Musk, including tapping him for a temporary cost-cutting role in government.
In testimony supporting the DOJ motion, Cameron Stanley, the Pentagon’s top artificial intelligence official, said Grok had been used to launch more than 2,000 munitions at 2,000 targets within the first 96 hours of the US-Israel war on Iran.
Stanley said in a sworn declaration that if Grok cannot be deployed and upgraded because of “limitations in energy supply or limited reserve compute capability”, numerous Pentagon tools would be “severely impacted”.
That is the logic behind the filing: the turbines power the data centre, the data centre supports AI systems, and the AI systems are now being cast as military infrastructure. The court will have to decide whether that chain is enough to override a citizen enforcement case built into federal environmental law.
