Elon Musk’s rocket-building activities in Texas have led to a lawsuit from a surprising plaintiff: The party game Cards Against Humanity.On Friday, Cards Against Humanity announced it’s suing SpaceX for allegedly trespassing and dumping construction equipment on a plot of land it owns along the Texas-Mexico border. Cards Against Humanity originally bought the acres of vacant land in 2017 to protest former President Trump’s plan to build a border wall, which it called wasteful and a danger to the local environment. The game company now alleges that “an even richer, more racist billionaire—Elon Musk” has been trespassing on the land, without permission, resulting in tractors and construction work from SpaceX encroaching on the area.
How the land used to look, according to Cards Against Humanity. (Credit: Cards Against Humanity)
“After we caught him, SpaceX gave us a 12-hour ultimatum to accept a lowball offer for less than half our land’s value. We said, ‘Go f*** yourself, Elon Musk. We’ll see you in court,'” Cards Against Humanity wrote in a new website dedicated to taking on Musk. As evidence, the company has supplied photos that show several construction vehicles and building materials on the plot of land that Cards Against Humanity said used to be untouched. The company has since filed a lawsuit in Texas, demanding SpaceX pay up to $15 million in damages to help restore the property.
(Credit: Cards Against Humanity)
How the land looks now, according to Cards Against Humanity. (Credit: Cards Against Humanity)
The lawsuit alleges that SpaceX has been treating the land as its own for the past six months. “The site was cleared of vegetation, and the soil was compacted with gravel or other substance to allow SpaceX and its contractors to run and park its vehicles all over the property. Generators were brought in to run equipment and lights while work was being performed before and after daylight,” the suit says. If the company wins the legal battle, it plans on distributing $100 to each of its 150,000 backers, who originally paid $15 to Cards Against Humanity to buy the plot of land in 2017.
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The lawsuit may seem like a political marketing stunt when Cards Against Humanity is known for other pranks, including sending poop to customers. Still, the legal tussle underscores the growing complaints and scrutiny surrounding SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas, where it’s been developing Starship, a rocket designed to send humans to the Moon and Mars. On its website, Cards Against Humanity also claims it isn’t alone in facing problems with SpaceX’s rocket activities in Texas. The company links to an article from Reuters documenting complaints of SpaceX’s growth in the area as “unfair and unchecked.” The same article also reports that SpaceX employees themselves have “complained about rushed projects, shoddy contractors and orders to build before authorities had approved construction.”SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But last week, the company published a post that slammed government reviews of its environmental impacts as going too far. “The narrative that we operate free of, or in defiance of, environmental regulation is demonstrably false,” the company added. Elon Musk has also called on US lawmakers to rein in the FAA, claiming it’s committing regulatory overreach with a recent fine against SpaceX.
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
I’ve been working as a journalist for over 15 years—I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017.
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