Cards Against Humanity, the company behind the popular card game of the same name, has sued Elon Musk for $15 million after it says employees of the billionaire’s company SpaceX trespassed on and damaged land near the U.S.-Mexico border—one of many stunts by the company targeting Musk over the years.
Elon Musk speaks on Aug. 24, 2024 in Water Mill, New York.
Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Key Takeaways
- Cards Against Humanity sued Musk in a Texas state court Thursday over claims SpaceX, which is headquartered nearby, encroached on the land and, without permission, cleared vegetation, unloaded gravel onto the property and used it to store construction equipment and vehicles.
- The lawsuit claims SpaceX has “treated the property as its own for at least six months” without Cards Against Humanity’s consent and, in the process, destroyed its natural condition, which the company says will take $15 million to fix.
- The piece of land in question near Brownsville, Texas, was purchased in 2017 using more than $2 million donated by Cards Against Humanity supporters after the company said it wanted to purchase the plot to thwart then-President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to curb illegal immigration.
- Cards Against Humanity promised it would make it “as time-consuming and expensive as possible for Trump to build his wall,” and purchased the property using $15 donations from 150,000 different people.
- Because the land was purchased with supporter money for a specific purpose, the company also claims that SpaceX’s use of the property has “caused damage” to its relationship with supporters by implying there may be an ongoing agreement between the two companies, even though “nothing could be more offensive to Cards Against Humanity,” the lawsuit says.
- The suit also personally attacks Musk, claiming he stole the land “without remorse or even explanation, as has become his public reputation throughout the world” and citing a New York Times article that claims Musk’s charitable promises made to the Texas county in which SpaceX is headquartered “have either not been fulfilled or have been made to further his own company.”
Cards Against Humanity’s History Of Political Pranks And Stunts
In the lawsuit, Cards Against Humanity says it often uses pranks or stunts—like buying the Texas land—to draw attention to particular issues or “people who ignore the rights and problems of regular people for their own personal enrichment or aggrandizement.” The complaint specifically notes Trump and Musk have both been targeted.
In 2016, months before Trump’s first election against Hilary Clinton, the company started selling expansion packs for its games called “Vote for Hillary” and “Vote for Trump” and said proceeds from both would be directed toward the Clinton campaign. It also started to take out billboards under a political action committee it founded called the Nuisance Committee and targeted the would-be president with signs like “If Trump is so rich, how come he didn’t buy this billboard?” and “Donald Trump, he can’t read this, but he is afraid of it.”
In 2022, the company offered users a discount sale code if they could successfully solve difficult CAPTCHA puzzles—like those that ask users to choose which photos picture a bicycle to prove they are human users. In one of the puzzles, users had to successfully identify which CAPTCHAs included “assholes,” including figures like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Tucker Carlson and others. Last November, the company launched a prank social media platform as a parody of Musk-owned site X, formerly known as Twitter, called Yowza, where posting that singular word was the only thing a user could do.
The site was “guaranteed to be free of misinformation, hate speech and bad vibes of any kind” and was launched amid rising criticism that both misinformation and hate speech was skyrocketing on Musk’s site since he took it over.
