Bitcoin mining big MARA has filed a federal lawsuit looking for to dam a deliberate Nov. 4 native election in Hood County, Texas, alleging that county officers unlawfully positioned a municipal incorporation measure on the poll to focus on its knowledge middle operations.
This text is from Theminermag, a commerce publication for the cryptocurrency mining trade, specializing in the most recent information and analysis on institutional bitcoin mining firms.
Within the 47-page criticism filed on Oct. 27 within the U.S. District Court docket for the Northern District of Texas, MARA accuses Hood County, County Decide Ron Massingill, County Lawyer Matt Mills, and Elections Administrator Stephanie Cooper of “intentional and unconstitutional” conduct in approving a poll initiative to create a brand new municipality referred to as Mitchell Bend round MARA’s mining facility close to Granbury.
MARA claims the proposed city boundaries have been “drawn simply to encircle” its web site, giving native residents regulatory energy to “tax and regulate it out of enterprise.” The corporate argues the county violated a number of provisions of the Texas Native Authorities Code governing municipal incorporations, together with necessities on inhabitants, boundaries, and pre-existing group standing.
The dispute stems from neighborhood opposition to the large-scale air-cooled bitcoin mining facility, which MARA acquired in early 2024. The corporate started mitigating noise final summer time by transitioning to immersion cooling expertise, which submerges mining machines in liquid coolant to dampen sound.
On the time, MARA stated it had put in a 24-foot acoustical wall, moved fan-cooled items farther from houses, and anticipated the brand new immersion containers to be absolutely deployed by 12 months’s finish. Regardless of these steps, tensions endured. Residents, organized beneath a gaggle referred to as Residents Involved About Wolf Hole and represented by the environmental regulation agency Earthjustice, sued the corporate in 2024 for personal nuisance however later misplaced a associated noise case in county courtroom.
The brand new lawsuit claims that Hood County Decide Ron Massingill, County Lawyer Matt Mills, and Elections Administrator Stephanie Cooper labored with the identical group to fast-track the incorporation measure earlier than the August poll deadline. Inside emails cited within the submitting present officers acknowledging defects within the petition—comparable to inconsistent metropolis names and lacking boundary maps—whereas pushing it by regardless.
“The county isn’t going to invalidate the petition right now,” Mills wrote in an Oct. 3 electronic mail quoted within the criticism. “The courts are open for a submitting for an injunction.”
Marathon argues that the incorporation effort has “no official municipal goal” and was as an alternative designed to “regulate and tax the corporate out of existence.”
The case, MARA Holdings, Inc. et al. v. Hood County, Texas et al., is docketed as No. 4:25-cv-1202 within the Northern District of Texas, Fort Price Division.
The unique article will be seen right here.
