This Tech Litigation Roundup gathers and briefly analyzes notable lawsuits and court decisions across a variety of tech-and-law issues.
Each roundup in 2026 will dive deep into a major development with expert analysis from TJL legal fellow, Maddy Batt. This month’s focus is the growing wave of environmental lawsuits seeking to block the development of AI data centers—massive, server-filled facilities that have been shown to sap local resources and emit harmful pollutants into local communities and ecosystems.
Here is an excerpt:
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.
Continue reading May’s Roundup on Tech Policy Press.
Roundup of 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.
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