SpaceX ‘Exhausts Its Options’ as Judge Lets NAACP’s Memphis Pollution Suit Proceed

The Great Elong sell…

Bad news for Elon stans today. Our ex-VPOTUS (read: Elon Musk) just got b*tch slapped by a federal judge for the second time in two weeks. Late Friday, Judge Debra Brown denied a bid by SpaceXAI, the former xAI that now lives inside SpaceX, to toss the NAACP’s Clean Air Act lawsuit over the gas turbines powering its Colossus data centers in Greater Memphis. So the case moves forward. 

Allow me to catch you up… (if you’re lost) the suit, filed in April by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, says xAI (the AI lab that brought you MechaHitler) and its subsidiary MZX Tech ran 27 gas-fired turbines just across the state line in Southaven, Mississippi, between August and December 2025 “without an air permit or regard for the health and safety of people living nearby.” Per the suit, those turbines pump out smog-forming pollutants, particulate matter, and an “unpleasant odor.”

Now, SpaceXAI’s lawyers went full galaxy brain. In June, they argued the turbines were “mobile” (read: parked on trailers) and therefore exempt from permits. They also argued the NAACP had no right to sue, and that citizen lawsuits like this one are unconstitutional.

Judge Brown knee-capped all three, ruling that the NAACP has standing, that citizen suits don’t violate the Constitution, and that the combustion turbines “are not ‘mobile sources’” under Mississippi’s rules. In other words, the “mobile” defense was about as accurate as Elon’s predictions about self-driving cars.

To be fair, Mississippi’s own environmental regulators originally told the company the turbines were portable and didn’t need air permits. Oops. Now those same regulators are seeking about $6.1M in potential penalties across three Southaven-area sites, which is basically ashtray money to Elon now. 

Back in June, Donny’s personal law firm Justice Department also asked the judge to throw out the case for good. On Oct. 19, Judge Brown ruled the feds can’t end a citizen suit on their own. That was b*tch slap #1. 

Oh, and Friday’s ruling doesn’t decide whether SpaceXAI actually broke the law. SpaceXAI says it plans to pull out (ayy) the temporary turbines eventually. The NAACP’s request to shut them off until they’re permitted is still pending, and neighbors have also filed a proposed class action over the noise. Which, does any lawsuit ever actually end?

Of course, Elon didn’t hear no bell. On Saturday, he announced two more data centers near Colossus 2 on X, each packing roughly 200K Nvidia chips (per Elon) and due online before year-end. One’s called “Gun Range,” after the old police gun range it sits on. The other is “Spam,” after the Hormel building it used to be, and it’ll run the company’s AI models.

TLDR: Grok is about to live in a building called Spam. Which, honestly, explains the smell. Until next time, friends…

 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.