The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a memorandum in response to NAACP’s lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI (now SpaceX) Colossus 2 data center. According to Wired, the federal government, through the DOJ, said that stopping the natural gas turbines needed to run the xAI data center “threatens American 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.” It further said that Grok is one of only four AI models the military and security agencies use to “support mission-critical operations across Secret and Top-Secret classified networks.”
Due to those purported national security interests, DOJ lawyers have joined xAI and the state of Missisippi in requesting that the lawsuit be dismissed.
The NAACP, through the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), sued xAI last year after an investigation discovered that Musk’s Colossus supercomputer facility used “illegal” generators to power its AI GPUs. The Memphis supercluster was launched in just 19 days — a major feat given that most projects of this scale usually take four years, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
The site officially powered on in July 2024, but it wasn’t May 2025 that it became fully operational after it received 150MW of power from Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). But instead of waiting months to get connected to the grid, xAI bridged the gap with mobile generators to get the electricity needed to run the hundreds of thousands of power-hungry GPUs.
It turns out that xAI failed to secure the permits needed to run the majority of these units. It’s been reported that the company applied for 15 portable turbines, but thermal images show at least 35 units on site. The company is allegedly using a loophole that allows it to run these units for 364 days without needing paperwork, but the Environmental Protect Agency (EPA) has since closed this loophole.
Aside from the offending generators in the first Colossus site, which is rented out to Anthropic, 27 natural gas turbines at Colossus 2 were cited as noncompliant in the initial lawsuit filed in April 2026.
However, as of May 2026, the SELC says that 57 turbines on the site are operating on site without a permit. According to the nonprofit, this resulted in a 111% increase in nitrogen oxide exhaust, an 83% jump in PM2.5 pollutants, and an 88% uptick in formaldehyde emissions since these generators were added. The lawsuit argues that these emissions endanger public health, and that continued use of the turbines “increases risks of asthma attacks and heart disease” in the surrounding communities.
In response to the DOJ's filing, the SELC issued the following statement: “With this filing, the Trump administration is launching an unprecedented attack on the public’s ability to defend themselves from illegal pollution. This is a blatant attempt to let well-connected corporations like xAI unlawfully pollute without any consequences, putting communities across the country at risk and threatening to open the door to large-scale pay-to-pollute corruption in the process,” SELC Litigation Director Kym Myer said. “The Department of Justice’s frivolous arguments fly in the face of decades of well-established legal precedent and we look forward to fighting them in court.”
The case is National Association for the Advancement of Colored People et al v. X.AI Corp. et al, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Missourt.
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