Before and after: Aerial photos show what being Elon Musk's neighbor can do to your land

Whoever had “Cards Against Humanity sues Elon Musk’s SpaceX” on their 2024 bingo card, you win. This month the party game company filed a lawsuit seeking $15 million in damages from SpaceX for trespassing and dumping on its land as well as interfering in its business relationships.

In case you’re wondering how this strange clash between a card game and a cartoon billionaire came to be: Cards Against Humanity (CAH) originally purchased a property along the Texas-Mexico border in August 2017 in an attempt to thwart then-president Donald Trump’s border wall. It raised $2.25 million from supporters ($15 each from 150,000 people) to pay for the land as well as to secure a law firm that specializes in eminent domain to “make it as time-consuming and expensive as possible for Trump to build his wall.”

Since the purchase, CAH has gotten new neighbors — and problems with a new billionaire. Musk’s SpaceX, which has a launch facility 3 miles away, has since purchased the plots of land on either side of CAH. (A spokesperson for CAH said they didn’t know when those transactions took place and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

Here’s Google Earth imagery of what the land looked like in March 2022, a few years after CAH (using an LLC called Hole Holding) purchased it, versus April of this year after SpaceX began developing the plots. It appears SpaceX has altered both its and CAH's property.

As CAH phrased it on its website for the lawsuit, Elon Musk “figured he could just dump his shit all over our gorgeous plot of land without asking.” CAH said that after confronting SpaceX, the company in October of last year made a lowball offer for less than half the land’s value and gave them a 12-hour ultimatum in which to accept.

‘We said, “Go fuck yourself, Elon Musk. We’ll see you in court,”’ CAH wrote.

The 0.39 acres of property CAH owns was valued at around $2,150 when it was purchased and now is appraised at about $35,000, according to the county.

Here are some before and after photos of the land, provided by CAH in the lawsuit:

Before

After

“[N]one of the materials, none of the workers depicted in these pictures are owned by or associated with CAH in any way,” CAH said in its lawsuit. “SpaceX has never asked for permission to use the Property, much less for the egregious appropriation of the Property for its own profit-making purposes.”

CAH said SpaceX cleared the property of vegetation, spread gravel, ran generators, and trampled over the property with construction vehicles. CAH says it strove to keep the “pristine vacant property untouched by development nor impacted in any way to affect its original natural condition” mostly as they found it, simply mowing it and marking the property with a fence and a “No Trespassing” sign.

A CAH spokesperson said that the equipment and materials were still on the property as of the lawsuit’s filing.

Reuters has an excellent piece about how SpaceX has bought up properties and politicians in the area, sending property values up but the quality of life down. Musk is also facing blowback for environmental destruction at some of his other companies, including xAI in Tennessee and the Boring Company closer to Austin Texas.

In the lawsuit, the board game’s owners write that “CAH’s relationship with its supporters is its most precious asset both in the form of its current relationship and the prospective relationship in the future,” it says. “SpaceX’s acts have caused damage to both relationships in a variety of ways, but, in particular, by creating the impression that there is some association between CAH and SpaceX.”

CAH says it hopes to pay out the $15 million it is seeking in the suit via $100 payments to each of the 150,000 who originally donated money for the land. The site also says it will accept Twitter.com as compensation, a dig at how much less the company now called X is worth since Musk purchased it in 2022 for $44 billion.

Jon Keegan contributed reporting.