MARA Holdings Lawsuits: The Granbury Noise Cases That Are Writing the Rules for AI Data Center Claims

The distinction is the most important thing to understand about this operator's docket. The Texas state court case, filed in October 2024 by Earthjustice on behalf of Granbury residents, pleads private nuisance and asks for a permanent injunction. It does not primarily seek money. It asks a judge to order the noise controlled at its source, which for a site running around the clock can mean re-engineering the cooling. That is why an injunction demand, not a damages number, is what operators cite in their risk disclosures.

The federal complaint filed in May 2026 is a separate matter with different plaintiffs. Nine Hood County property owners plead private nuisance, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and seek more than $1 million in damages. The negligence theory says the operator failed to take reasonable care in how it built and ran the facility; the emotional distress claim puts years of sleepless nights directly at issue. Neither case has produced a ruling on whether the company did anything wrong. The state court did deny a motion to dismiss in 2025, which means the claims are legally sufficient to proceed, and residents moved in September 2025 to compel the company to turn over information about the noise. Our full report on the Granbury cases tracks both.

MARA is not a data center landlord. It is a bitcoin miner that owns power assets and describes itself as working at the intersection of energy, compute, and digital capital, and it has since moved into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure. But acoustically, a mine and a hyperscale AI campus are close cousins: dense computing, industrial cooling, a continuous mechanical drone that carries into homes. That is why the Granbury litigation is the test bed for every question an AI data center plaintiff will face. What proves that a constant hum unreasonably interferes with the use of a home? How do you connect tinnitus and sleep loss to one facility with acoustic and medical evidence? Will a court order a running facility to change?

Texas adds a lesson that travels. These suits proceeded even though the site sits outside big-city noise regulation, because nuisance law does not require an ordinance violation, only proof that the interference is substantial and unreasonable. That is what the documented health effects are there to show. The first AI-era answers are arriving in Wisconsin, where the Microsoft Fairwater class action borrows the same frame at the scale of more than 1,000 households, and the contrast is Virginia's Great Oak dispute, where an operator quieted its buildings under community pressure without anyone filing. Our noise lawsuit guide and evidence guide cover what a case like this requires, and our free case review connects you with an independent attorney in our network who handles data center cases in your state, at no cost and with no obligation.