Gas turbines are seen at the xAI Data Center on Riverport Road in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 25, 2025.
Brandon Dill | Washington Post | Getty Images
The NAACP filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Elon Musk’s xAI, accusing the artificial intelligence company xAI of violating the Clean Air Act by using natural gas-burning turbines to power data centers in and around Memphis, Tennessee.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, alleges that between August and December 2025, xAI and its subsidiary, MZX Tech, LLC, installed and operated 27 gas turbines in South Haven, Mississippi “without obtaining air permits and without regard for the health and safety of those living nearby.”
Turbines emit pollutants and particulate matter that form smog and can pose increased health risks and unpleasant odors, among other things.
The NAACP is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief for the companies to “cease operations at the Colossus Gas Plant unless it obtains the necessary permits, enforce the necessary pollution controls, and pay appropriate civil penalties for each date of violation.”
“Our right to clean air is not negotiable, especially when companies prove they are prioritizing convenience over people,” Abre Connor, director of environmental and climate justice at the NAACP, said in an emailed statement.
xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
xAI, which is now owned by SpaceX after a merger this year, has been using natural gas-burning turbines at its facility in South Haven, Mississippi, for several months and claims it didn’t need a federal permit because it was only a temporary use.
The company operates Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers across the Mississippi state line in Memphis. The company plans to build another power plant in Southaven called Macrohardrr, where it is also building a more permanent power plant that will use 41 natural gas-fired turbines to power the data center.
According to the lawsuit, tens of thousands of people live, work and study near xAI’s power plants, and hundreds of thousands more live in Greater Memphis. “Blacks make up a much larger proportion of this population than the entire population of this country,” the filing states.
Separately, the NAACP is asking Mississippi regulators to revoke a permit granted in March to xAI that allowed Musk’s company to build a large power plant in South Haven with 41 permanent turbines.
Musk, the world’s richest man, is looking to the greater Memphis area as the backbone of xAI’s growth as it seeks to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in the burgeoning AI market.
The company has sparked regulatory investigations by the EU Commission and the UK’s online safety regulator, among others, after its Grok image generator and chatbot enabled the widespread creation and sharing of deepfakes, which are AI pornography based on images of real people, including non-consensual children.
Amid that controversy, SpaceX acquired xAI in February, valuing the combined company at $1.25 trillion, ahead of what is expected to be a record IPO in the coming months.
The NAACP is being represented in the lawsuit by Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center.
