SpaceX has not always distinguished itself as a good environmental citizen. Part of that is unavoidable. You can’t launch 170 rockets per year—as the company did in 2025—without releasing a lot of black soot into the upper atmosphere and creating a lot of light and noise around the launch site, which can be harmful to local wildlife.
Environmental organizations have mounted multiple legal challenges against the company over the years to enjoin or minimize its freedom to launch until multiple corrective measures are taken. Now SpaceX faces another day in court. On Sept. 21 a judge ruled that a proposed land swap with the federal government that would allow the company to expand its launch pads, factory, and related infrastructure into a protected wildlife area in Texas could go ahead.
That might have settled the issue but the environmental groups that sued to stop this, plan to appeal—and they believe they have a strong case. On June 10, a group of plaintiffs filed suit against the Department of the Interior to block a Trump Administration plan to cede SpaceX 725 acres of land in the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge hard up against the company’s Starbase factory and launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, in exchange for 692 acres the company owns in the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge about 20 miles north of Starbase. The land that would be annexed by SpaceX is not only home to thousands of species of plants and animals including the ocelot, which is endangered in the U.S.; it is also considered sacred by the Native American Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, which is a plaintiff in the suit.
What’s more, the tract has cultural and historical significance as it includes the Palmito Ranch Battlefield, the site of the last land battle of the Civil War. The fact that the acreage that SpaceX gets will not be a gift, but rather an exchange for land the company currently owns—taking that latter plot off the table for development—does not solve the problem, says Laiken Jordahl, public lands advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Sept. 21, Judge Fernando Rodriuguez, Jr., of the U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of Texas, denied the Center for Biological Diversity’s request for a preliminary injunction that would prevent the move, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. In their filing, the plaintiffs argued that the land swap would cause them irreparable harm since they would lose access to those acres and the freedom to observe wildlife there. The Interior Department countered that the land was already closed to the public as part of its wildlife refuge status, so the plaintiffs suffered no loss.
The plaintiffs, in their filing, anticipated this finding and sought to rebut it in advance with 2014 case law. Individuals can possess a cognizable interest ‘in observing the landscape from surrounding areas[.]’” Rodriguez—appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump during his first term—was unmoved, and if anything, saw SpaceX as the potentially aggrieved party. The requested injunction, he wrote, “would impose uncertainty into and would result in modifications to SpaceX’s development plans, placing additional hardship on the company’s ability to meet milestones and contractual obligations.” “We are obviously, extraordinarily disappointed in the judge's decision,” says Jordahl.
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