More than 10,000 residents near Southaven, Mississippi, have been drawn into a class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI and his rocket firm SpaceX, alleging that a massive gas-fired power plant supporting nearby data centres produces "omnipresent and inescapable" noise that has damaged their health and eroded property values. The lawsuit was made public on Tuesday in federal court in Oxford, Mississippi, with three named plaintiffs filing on behalf of the broader class. xAI subsidiary MZX Tech is also named as a defendant; Musk himself is not.
The complaint argues that Musk's companies negligently failed to control the disturbance and thereby created a public nuisance through round-the-clock noise and vibrations. Plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages for emotional distress and reduced property values, as well as disgorgement of an unspecified amount of company profits. Attorney Robert Wiygul, representing the plaintiffs, put it plainly: "Our homes are supposed to be a sanctuary for us against the world. When they are invaded by noise 24 hours a day, it takes that fundamental peace of a good and decent life away from us." Neither xAI nor SpaceX responded to requests for comment.
Southaven is a city in the northern tip of Mississippi, just south of Memphis, Tennessee. xAI invested more than $20 billion to construct the power plant there, a project that received the backing of Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves. Gas-fired turbines at the site supply electricity to data centres in and around Southaven — the kind of energy-intensive infrastructure that has proliferated across the United States as demand for AI computing power surges.
The lawsuit is not the first legal challenge the Southaven facility has faced. In April, the civil rights organisation NAACP sued xAI over the plant, accusing the company of violating US environmental regulations; that case remains pending. Last month, the US Department of Justice signalled in a court filing that it may intervene in the NAACP case, noting that the dispute raises significant legal and policy questions about the federal government's role in AI infrastructure development.
The broader significance of these cases extends well beyond Mississippi. As the AI industry accelerates, the communities hosting its physical backbone — power plants, data centres, cooling systems — are increasingly pushing back against noise, pollution, and health concerns. The possible intervention of the Justice Department suggests that the tensions between rapid AI expansion and local environmental standards may soon require a national policy response rather than resolution through individual lawsuits alone.