- A New Mexico judge dismissed a Las Cruces resident’s lawsuit over the Project Jupiter data center for the second time, but allowed him to refile once more.
Resident Derrick Pacheco originally sued Doña Ana County officials for approving $165 billion in bonds for an Oracle and OpenAI development before the county’s Planning and Zoning Commission had voted on its zoning. - Pacheco, who used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to help him write and file his lawsuit, said he plans to refile and is now considering hiring an attorney.
- A government watchdog group, the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, filed its own lawsuit this week, accusing county officials of withholding public records related to the data center by improperly claiming a narrow exemption designed for terrorist threat response plans.
- At least four lawsuits related to Project Jupiter are now pending in court, with multiple groups alleging the project was approved through a secretive, rushed, and legally flawed process.
Wednesday, June 24, 2026 — A Las Cruces man who used ChatGPT to fight a data center partly built by OpenAI has had his lawsuit dismissed a second time by a New Mexico judge, though he gets one more chance to refile a stronger complaint. Derrick Pacheco originally sued Doña Ana County officials in October, alleging they improperly issued $165 billion in bonds for the Oracle and OpenAI Project Jupiter data center before the county’s Planning and Zoning Commission could weigh in on zoning.
Third Judicial District Court Judge James Foy dismissed the complaint without prejudice, telling Pacheco plainly, “Go get a lawyer,” and noting he was on his second of three chances to get it right. Meanwhile, the legal pressure on county officials is growing from other directions. The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government filed its own lawsuit this week, arguing that county officials wrongfully refused to release emails about the project by citing a narrow public records exemption meant for terrorist response plans. The group’s legal director, Amanda Lavin, called the county’s use of that exemption improper and said it reflects a broader public concern that Project Jupiter was approved through a rushed and secretive process. Two additional lawsuits filed by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center are also pending, one alleging that county officials voted to approve an incomplete application with the word “draft” stamped across documents, and another claiming officials violated the state’s Open Meetings Act by abruptly halting a public meeting and retreating behind closed doors. The county’s commission chair and county manager did not respond to requests for comment.
Details about this development have been published by Source New Mexico
and republished below pursuant to the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
New Mexico judge dismisses Project Jupiter data center lawsuit, but offers chance to re-file
by Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
June 23, 2026
A New Mexico judge on Tuesday dismissed a Las Cruces resident’s lawsuit against the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners over its handling of a vote on the controversial Project Jupiter data center — but gave him another chance to refile.
Resident Derrick Pacheco first filed his lawsuit against county officials in October and accused them of acting inappropriately by issuing $165 billion in bonds for the Oracle and OpenAI development before the county Planning and Zoning Commission had a chance to vote on its zoning. At the time, Pacheco told Source NM he was relying on OpenAI’s service ChatGPT to coach him through writing and filing a lawsuit rather than hiring an attorney.
Tuesday’s ruling was the second time Third Judicial District Court Judge James Foy has dismissed Pacheco’s complaint without prejudice, meaning each time he has given him a chance to re-file an amended version. During the most recent hearing, Foy told Pacheco that he was on his second of three strikes.
“I think I told you this last time: Go get a lawyer,” Foy told him.
Attorneys for Oracle, Doña Ana County and Yucca Growth Infrastructure, one of the data center’s developers, argued in court that giving Pacheco another chance to file an amended lawsuit would be a “third bite at the apple” and a waste of judicial resources.
After the ruling, Pacheco told Source NM he plans to file an amended complaint in the coming weeks and is considering hiring an attorney.
“If I win this thing, that’s unprecedented news,” he said, referring to his plan to use OpenAI’s services to fight OpenAI’s planned data center. “It’s the supercomputer fighting the supercomputer.”
While Pacheco goes back to the drawing board, several other Project Jupiter-related lawsuits are pending in court.
This week, the government watchdog group New Mexico Foundation for Open Government filed a lawsuit against county officials and accused them of violating the state’s public records law, the Inspection of Public Records Act.
In the lawsuit, the foundation’s attorneys argue that county officials refused to turn over public records, such as emails related to the data center, requested by the New Mexico Environmental Law Center because they fall under the law’s exemption for state “tactical response plans…that could be used to facilitate the planning or execution of a terrorist attack.”
“They’re wrongfully relying on this exemption that’s very narrow…they’re using it to withhold emails that are obviously of great public concern,” Amanda Lavin, NMFOG’s legal director, told Source NM Tuesday. “We’re filing this lawsuit in the greater context of the general public perception, which is that this project got approved in a very secretive, chaotic, sort of rushed process that concerns a lot of people.”
Neither the chair of the county commission nor the county manager responded Tuesday to Source NM’s request for comment.
The New Mexico Environmental Law Center also has filed two lawsuits, both pending in court, over the development.
In one, filed in October, NMELC attorneys argue that county officials violated state law by voting to approve Project Jupiter last year even though the applications before the Board of County Commissioners were incomplete and, in some cases, had the word “draft” written across them.
The other suit alleges that county leaders violated the state’s Open Meetings Act when they “abruptly” paused a heated meeting regarding Project Jupiter and proceeded to meet behind closed doors.
Lavin, the attorney for the open government group, said the allegations in her lawsuit closely align with the two NMELC cases.
“The way that the county has handled IPRA requests related to what they’re doing fuels the concern that they’re not above-board with what they’re doing here,” she said.
Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@sourcenm.com.
Image via Source New Mexico.
