Bitcoin Miner Sues Judge and Prosecutor, Claiming It's Been Targeted by Noise Laws

Bitcoin mining firm NewRays is suing a judge and prosecutor, alleging that they selectively enforced noise legislation against the company. In the complaint, NewRays states that despite other companies making more noise than it does, laws were created to specifically target the mining firm.

The complaint, filed on September 26, claims that Judge Allen Dodson, prosecuting attorney Phil Murphy, and additional defendants specifically and unfairly targeted NewRays with noise legislation.

NewRays acquired property in Arkansas to begin its data center for crypto mining in October 2022. However, this came before a set of local noise ordinances were put into place. The mining firm believes that these ordinances were created to directly target the company.

“Ordinance 23-20 was intended to apply only to NewRays, and no other person or entity,” the company writes in the lawsuit, “despite the presence of numerous other commercial and industrial applications generating more sound than does NewRays.”

This came after neighbors complained about the humming noise that NewRays was generating.

According to local news outlet KATV, attempts to sell land adjacent to the mining firm’s location have failed and the value of nearby property has decreased due to the noise. Since the initial 2023 lawsuit, NewRays installed sound barriers requested by a neighbor. But, according to local reporting, this did not fully mitigate the issue.

Previously in Texas, crypto miner Marathon Digital had 12 noise charges levied against the company’s site manager. Neighbors complained that the miners’ incessant whirring fans caused health problems including headaches, vertigo, nausea, and sleep disturbances—local residents compared it to “living in a nightmare.” A Texas jury later acquitted David Fischer, the site manager, for all noise violations put to him.

NewRay’s new complaint claims that the Faulkner County Quorum Court attempted to create a law specifically targeted at crypto mining. However, not enough people attended the meeting—so it was disbanded.

Justin Daniels, co-chair of the Am Law 100 firm's blockchain and digital assets practice, told Law.com that selective enforcement due to crypto’s bad reputation is something that doesn’t surprise him.

"Bitcoin mining gets a lot of criticism for the amount of energy it uses," Daniels explained. "But data training centers for artificial intelligence do the same thing, yet I don't hear the criticism. The reason for that is that the general consensus is that AI has a lot of value and a lot of people think that Bitcoin doesn't have value."

Edited by Stacy Elliott.