A federal judge in Mississippi ruled on Monday that the Trump administration cannot use the Environmental Protection Agency to throw out an NAACP lawsuit accusing Elon Musk’s AI company of running unpermitted gas turbines to power a data center.
Judge Debra M. Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi wrote that the EPA administrator may join citizen suits brought under the Clean Air Act, but that “nothing in the Clean Air Act allows the Administrator to unilaterally dismiss a citizen suit upon intervention,” Bloomberg Law reported. The suit, filed in April by the NAACP and its Mississippi State Conference, is aimed at turbines in Southaven, Miss., that supply the Colossus 2 data center across the state line in South Memphis, according to Mississippi Today.
The civil rights group wants a court order requiring the company, known as SpaceXAI since a merger, to use the best available pollution controls on the turbines, along with penalties of up to $124,426 per day for each violation. Without those remedies, the NAACP argued, the turbines could drive up pollution in nearby neighborhoods that are predominantly Black. The ruling settles only who controls the case. It makes no finding that the company broke the law and doesn’t order the turbines shut off.
The Justice Department had argued that the facility supports AI development and national defense. As Ars Technica reported, the administration told the court it would “not serve the public interest” to let citizens pursue heavy civil penalties against AI companies racing to bring data centers online under President Trump’s AI Action Plan. Judge Brown called the government’s reading of the law an “extraordinary position.”
The statute does let the government end a citizen suit, but only when the EPA or a state is pursuing its own enforcement action over the same violations. The administration has made clear it has no plans to sue the company. “Because the Administrator has not taken any action to enforce the Clean Air Act here, these cases do not support the United States’ position,” Judge Brown wrote of the precedents the government cited.
She also pointed out that the same law lets people sue the EPA administrator for failing to enforce it. “Evidently, Congress contemplated that citizen suits may not always align with the EPA’s judgment,” she wrote.
In a footnote, the judge noted that Congress considered an amendment in 1990 that would have let the EPA step into citizen suits and take them over. Lawmakers didn’t pass it. “At most, the proposed amendment is evidence that at least some members of the 1990 Congress believed that the citizen suit provision as written does not allow the Administrator to intervene and subsequently terminate a citizen plaintiff’s claim,” she wrote.
The government also argued that collecting penalties payable to the Treasury is “a quintessentially executive power,” and that the court should dismiss the case to avoid a constitutional clash. Judge Brown said the government had failed to point to any ambiguity in the text. “Constitutional avoidance does not allow the Court to invent a right that does not exist in the statute,” she wrote.
Laura Thoms, enforcement director at Earthjustice, which represents the NAACP along with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a statement that “the Trump administration has gone out of its way to shield Elon Musk’s company, xAI, from liability and to deny local communities their right to protect themselves against illegal pollution.” Patrick Anderson, a senior attorney at the law center, said the group was “pleased the Court saw through the Department of Justice’s deeply flawed arguments,” according to the center’s release.
Earthjustice’s release, dated Oct. 20, said the order came on Monday. Ars Technica reported it as Tuesday.
The company runs 69 turbines at the Southaven site, Mississippi Today reported. State regulators issued an air permit for 27 gas-fired turbines there in March, and the lawsuit concentrates on the months before that. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality has said the temporary turbines comply with state rules, and the company has argued that temporary units don’t need permits.
The administration first moved to intervene this summer, citing the president’s own authority rather than the EPA’s. It later amended the motion to say it was acting for the agency. Shortly before Monday’s order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused the Justice Department’s request to the case, saying the lower court had not yet ruled.
The government can still take part. “What the United States can and cannot do after intervention, however, is another matter,” Judge Brown wrote. She gave administration lawyers until Friday, Oct. 23, to explain how far they intend to participate beyond seeking dismissal, or withdraw.