Madeline Batt is the Legal Fellow for Tech Justice Law.

The Tech Litigation Roundup spotlights notable lawsuits and court decisions across a variety of tech-and-law issues.

The data center buildout powering the current AI boom has sparked widespread grassroots opposition in the US. Increasingly, litigation is becoming an important tool for resistance.

In May, a county court in Minnesota demonstrated why. In MCEA v. Pine Island, the court granted a temporary restraining order preventing construction of a more than 100-acre data center development intended for use by Google in Pine Island, Minnesota, while the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA) argues that the project’s environmental review was insufficient under state law.

The same month, the NAACP filed for a preliminary injunction to stop the use of the unpermitted gas turbines that fuel xAI’s “Colossus” data centers. The filing alleges the turbines are spewing toxic pollutants into historically Black neighborhoods in the greater Memphis area. In its lawsuit, first filed in April, the NAACP argues xAI’s failure to obtain permits violates the federal Clean Air Act––though the federal government has indicated it may argue the opposite.

Environmental law challenges to data centers

Both lawsuits are part of a broader wave of environmental law challenges to data centers. The fact that these cases have become a major legal threat to data centers is unsurprising: the server-filled facilities require vast amounts of water for cooling and electricity to keep systems running. Some data centers use hundreds of millions of gallons of water annually, dwarfing the consumption of the communities where they are located. To meet their power demands, some operators also opt for on-site gas power that emits harmful pollutants.

Lawsuits over these impacts draw on a range of environmental laws to make generally similar arguments: companies or public bodies failed to properly assess the environmental impacts of a proposed data center under the applicable legal standards or procedures. Often, cases target alleged failures in environmental review or permitting processes.

One of the earliest cases was brought in 2020 in Chile, challenging the approval of a Google data center in a region already facing severe water shortages. The lawsuit was largely successful, with the court agreeing with the community that the project needed further environmental review. Since then, environmental cases against data centers have been filed in Ireland, California, and Massachusetts, among others, with mixed results.

Preliminary relief won in Minnesota, sought in Memphis

The Pine Island case––one of four data center cases filed by MCEA––alleged that the environmental review process of a data center proposal conducted by the city of Pine Island was inadequate under Minnesota law because the city was unclear about the scope of the proposal, did not study the environmental impacts of the project, and made no binding commitments in its legally required mitigation plan.

With a conditional use permit issued and construction scheduled to begin in July 2026, the court granted MCEA’s request for a temporary restraining order and denied the Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The ruling temporarily blocks “construction and pre-construction activities” while MCEA seeks further review of the environmental impacts of the proposed data center.

The decision in Minnesota, though preliminary, signals to communities organizing against data centers in the US that lawsuits may be a viable tactic for blocking projects. The court’s willingness to halt development while the case is litigated is also significant. For opponents of data centers, legal victories can be hollow if a decision that environmental reviews were inadequate comes after the data center is already complete.

Even so, NAACP v. xAI shows that environmental law can also be used to challenge already operational data centers. The xAI Colossus data centers at issue in the suit are currently powered by gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi. According to the preliminary injunction motion, by mid-April, xAI and its wholly owned subsidiary, MZX Tech, had allegedly installed a total of 33 gas turbines without permits or emissions monitoring. By May, news outlets reported the number had reached 46 turbines.

According to the NAACP, these turbines are endangering the health of Black residents of communities where they are sited by emitting “staggering” amounts of harmful nitrogen oxides that “dwarf” every other industrial source of these pollutants in the area. The NAACP argues that xAI’s failure to seek permits for this gas plant––a process which their complaint notes would have required xAI to implement emissions controls––violates the federal Clean Air Act.

xAI’s filings so far suggest that the company plans to argue that the turbines are exempt from these requirements because they are “temporary mobile sources,” mounted on truck flatbeds. In a July 2025 letter to xAI, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality indicated that temporary, mobile sources of pollution are exempt from state permitting requirements.

The NAACP contests that characterization. Its complaint argues that the 200,000-pound turbines, which are “wired to transformers, and piped to water and gas supplies,” are not mobile under federal law, emphasizing that the EPA’s own regulations categorize them as stationary. On May 6, the NAACP sought a preliminary injunction. Like the temporary restraining order issued in Minnesota, the injunction is a temporary remedy. If granted, it could require xAI to stop using its unpermitted turbines during the litigation, potentially causing the Colossus data centers to pause operations. A hearing on the injunction request is scheduled for August. Around the same time, the judge is also expected to consider the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case, setting up a high-stakes moment for NAACP v. xAI later this summer.

The federal government’s potential intervention in NAACP v. xAI

US lawsuits alleging failures to adequately consider or mitigate the environmental impacts of data centers are unfolding against the backdrop of a federal policy pushing the opposite. In July of 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure.” The order states it is “a priority of my Administration to facilitate the rapid and efficient buildout of this infrastructure by easing Federal regulatory burdens.”

The tension between the Trump administration’s policy and lawsuits challenging alleged failures of data center projects to comply with environmental requirements has little direct legal impact. In cases based on state law, like MCEA v. Pine Island, the regulatory regime is entirely separate. And even in federal-law cases, such as NAACP v. xAI, an Executive Order cannot override statutes enacted by Congress or binding regulations

But the tension still matters because it gives the federal government a stake in data center litigation. While it takes time, the Administration can pursue changes to regulations that would stymie data center development, as it appears to be doing for the EPA regulations cited by the NAACP. The federal government can also make its views known in court. On May 13, the US government filed a notice indicating that it may intervene in NAACP v. xAI. The filing stated that the case raised “legal and policy questions as to which the United States has a substantial interest, including its priorities with respect to promotion of artificial intelligence infrastructure.” If the government intervenes, it is likely to argue for an interpretation of the Clean Air Act that allows xAI to keep its unpermitted turbines operating in communities where NAACP members live.

The administration’s interest in the case is in line with its previous intervention to oppose state-level AI regulation in Colorado. Whether those arguments ultimately influence the outcome of NAACP v. xAI is unclear, but it indicates that the Trump Administration remains strongly supportive of the rapid expansion of data centers––and is closely watching the litigation threats that could slow it down.

Other tech litigation developments

• School district social media bellwether settles: After the plaintiff’s historic win in the first bellwether social media addiction trial in March, social media companies settled claims brought by the Breathitt school district in Kentucky alleging that social media addiction has harmed the district. The settlement avoided a highly anticipated bellwether trial, which would have presented a different set of factual questions from the earlier case as Breathitt sought to show harm to its schools rather than to an individual young person.
• Chatbot litigation expands to unlicensed medical practice: Tech Justice Law (TJL) and the state of Pennsylvania filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Character.AI, respectively, alleging that the companies illegally engaged in the unlicensed practice of medicine when their chatbots dispensed medical advice. In the case against OpenAI, ChatGPT allegedly provided advice that contributed to a fatal overdose. This month also saw the anticipated filing of a lawsuit against OpenAI by families of victims of the Florida State University mass shooting.
• AI monetization and scams: OpenAI is facing a class action lawsuit alleging it shared users’ ChatGPT queries, in line with the predictions made in last month’s roundup. Meanwhile, Santa Clara County sued Meta for profiting from scams in violation of California’s false advertising and unfair business practices laws. The suit joins a similar case filed last month by TJL and the Consumer Federation of America under District of Columbia law.
• International tech accountability litigation: The Privacy Collective filed a class action on behalf of Dutch internet users against the company AppLovin, alleging that it tracks users’ data across mobile apps in violation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. Meanwhile, British advertisers filed an antitrust suit targeting Google’s alleged adtech monopoly.
• Litigation over AI training data continues: The record-breaking $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and authors who allege the company misused their books to train its chatbot Claude is on hold while a judge considers its fairness. Meanwhile, new copyright lawsuits have been filed against Meta and Perplexity, and an additional group of plaintiffs alleges that tech giants’ use of their “voice prints” to train AI violates Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act.
• Busy month for Texas AG: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton–who is also running for the US Senate after winning the Republican nomination this month–brought lawsuits against Netflix, Discord, and WhatsApp alleging deceptive business practices.