Court Denies xAI Injunction Against Minnesota Nudification Law

Court Denies xAI Injunction Against Minnesota Nudification Law

A federal judge in Minnesota denied xAI a preliminary injunction against the state's new nudification law on September 4, 2026, ruling that the company waited too long and failed to show irreparable harm. The court did not decide whether the law is constitutional. xAI appealed the same day.

Information last verified on September 5, 2026.

Status: Preliminary injunction denied September 4, 2026 in X.AI LLC v. Ellison, Civil No. 26-3425 (DWF/DTS) (D. Minn.). The case continues in the district court. xAI filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit the same day, September 4, 2026. No Eighth Circuit ruling appears on the district court docket as of September 5, 2026.

Jurisdiction: This ruling comes from the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota and binds no other court. H.F. 1606 is a Minnesota statute, codified at Minn. Stat. § 325E.91, and its subdivision 6 gives Minnesota courts jurisdiction over civil actions under it where the plaintiff or the defendant resides in the state. Other states regulate synthetic sexual imagery through different statutes with different structures, and federal law operates alongside all of them.

What Happened

xAI sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in his official capacity on July 27, 2026, arguing that H.F. 1606 violates the First Amendment both facially and as applied. Two days later it filed an emergency motion styled as a request for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction. On July 31, 2026 the court denied the temporary restraining order, citing xAI's delay in bringing the motion, and said it would instead hear the request as a motion for a preliminary injunction. A hearing was held on August 19, 2026, and the memorandum opinion and order issued on September 4, 2026. Our earlier report on the case as xAI first brought it in July covers the complaint and that initial order.

The court applied the ordinary four-factor framework: likelihood of success on the merits, likelihood of irreparable harm without preliminary relief, the balance of equities, and the public interest. The order cites Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council and the Eighth Circuit's en banc decision in Dataphase Systems, Inc. v. C L Systems, Inc. for those factors, describes a preliminary injunction as an extraordinary remedy, notes that a district court has broad discretion in deciding whether to issue one, and places what it calls the complete burden of proof on the party seeking relief. It then decided the motion on the second, third and fourth factors and never reached the first.

The delay finding

Minnesota argued as a threshold matter that the motion failed for lack of diligence and lack of irreparable harm. The court agreed. It noted that H.F. 1606 was signed on May 7, 2026, that xAI filed nearly three months later and only three days before the effective date, and that the only explanation offered was a general suggestion that laws like this one take time to reach corporate management and for management to authorize the resources to challenge them. The court acknowledged there is no bright-line rule for when such a motion must be filed, then wrote:

If xAI genuinely feared irreparable harm, the Court does not doubt it would have acted more quickly to file this action and move for injunctive relief. The fact that it did not do so strongly suggests a lack of irreparable harm.

The three rejected harm theories

Beyond delay, the court found xAI had not otherwise demonstrated a threat of irreparable harm, addressing each theory the company raised.

On the statutory penalty, the court held that a civil penalty of up to $500,000 per violation is monetary in nature and could be recouped if the law is eventually invalidated. It added that penalties were unlikely to be assessed at all, because xAI had disabled its nudification tool in Minnesota according to its own declaration.

On commercial injury, the court accepted that xAI built geographically targeted controls into the Grok Imagine image-editing pipeline between July 24 and August 1, 2026, and that the parties agree those costs would not be compensable by the State if the law were struck down. It still found the harm not irreparable: the adjustment had already been made with no evidence of future cost, the claim of substantial ongoing resource expenditure rested on evidence the court called vague and conclusory, and the predicted loss of Minnesota users was speculative and supported by a single declaration. Because H.F. 1606 applies to every company offering users AI tools capable of nudification, the court added, xAI would suffer no competitive disadvantage against rival services.

On the First Amendment itself, xAI argued that a loss of First Amendment freedoms for even minimal periods constitutes irreparable injury. The court read the Eighth Circuit's 2026 decision in Maixner v. Eidsness as recognizing that rule where First Amendment interests are clearly threatened or actually being impaired when relief is sought, while still requiring a clear showing of likely irreparable harm. The order quotes the Supreme Court's statement in Benisek v. Lamone that in a First Amendment case a preliminary injunction does not follow as a matter of course from a showing of likelihood of success, and that a court must also consider the remaining factors. A court may therefore deny preliminary relief independently when a movant acts with unreasonable delay.

The court then stated that the motion was properly denied for those reasons alone, and addressed the remaining factors anyway.

Balance of harms and public interest

Because the injunction was sought against the government, the court merged the balance-of-harms and public-interest factors and found they tip steeply in favor of the State. It emphasized that Minnesota enacted the statute democratically and nearly unanimously, that the harms from AI nudification technology are undisputed on this record, and that xAI does not dispute the State's interest in curbing the generation of such images. It quoted Maryland v. King for the proposition that a state suffers a form of irreparable injury any time it is enjoined from effectuating statutes enacted by representatives of its people.

What the Law Actually Says

H.F. 1606 passed the Minnesota House 132 to 1 on April 23, 2026 and the Senate 65 to 0 on April 29, 2026. The Governor signed it on May 7, 2026, and it became Chapter 72 of the 2026 session laws. Its effective date is August 1, 2026, and it applies to causes of action accruing on or after that date. The act's stated subject is commerce, and it prohibits access to nudification technology by adding a new section to Minnesota Statutes chapter 325E.

The operative prohibition, from the official session law text, reads:

Nudification prohibited. (a) A person who owns or controls a website, application, software, program, or other service must not: (1) allow a user to access, download, or use the website, application, software, program, or other service to nudify an image or video; or (2) nudify an image or video on behalf of a user. (b) No person may advertise or promote any website, application, software, program, or other service that performs the actions described in paragraph (a).

The exemption follows in subdivision 3:

Exemption. The prohibitions in subdivision 2 do not apply when the website, application, software, program, or other service requires the technical skill of a user to nudify an image or video.

That exemption turns on a defined term the court's block quote did not include. Subdivision 1(e) defines technical skill as the substantial application of individualized technological or artistic skill and judgment by a human creator in directing, shaping, or controlling the output. The statute's line, in practical terms, runs between a service that produces the result from a prompt and a tool that requires genuine human craft to reach the same place.

To nudify, under subdivision 1(d), means altering or generating an image or video to depict an intimate part that was not in the original unaltered image of an identifiable individual, where the result is so realistic that a reasonable person would believe the intimate part belongs to that individual. Intimate part carries the meaning given in Minn. Stat. § 609.341, subdivision 5.

Three enforcement structures sit on top of the prohibition. Subdivision 4 gives a depicted individual a private civil action for compensatory damages of up to three times actual damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, and attorney fees. Subdivision 5 lets the attorney general enforce the section under Minn. Stat. § 8.31 and sets a civil penalty of up to $500,000 for each unlawful access, download, or use. Recovered penalties are deposited in the general fund and appropriated each July 1 to the Office of Justice Programs for grants to organizations serving crime victims. Subdivision 7 states that the section does not alter the liabilities and protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and must be construed consistently with federal law.

Most state laws in this area, including those collected in our survey of state deepfake statutes and our state-by-state guide to nonconsensual intimate image laws, regulate the person who creates or distributes a synthetic sexual image. Minnesota's earlier work in this space, covered in our page on Minnesota's deepfake provisions, follows that pattern, as does California in its own synthetic media statutes.

H.F. 1606 is structurally different. It regulates the provider of the capability rather than the person who misuses it, and it does so through a commerce statute with an attorney general enforcement hook rather than the criminal code. That shift is why the case exists, and why the eventual merits ruling will matter beyond Minnesota. For how the state is legislating in this area more broadly, see our overview of artificial intelligence rules in Minnesota.

The First Amendment Question

The most important thing to understand about the September 4 order is what it does not contain. There is no scrutiny analysis in it. The court did not decide whether H.F. 1606 is content based or content neutral, did not apply strict or intermediate scrutiny, did not analyze the technical-skill exemption for speaker or viewpoint discrimination, did not address the advertising prohibition in subdivision 2(b), and did not reach the Section 230 savings clause in subdivision 7.

The order describes the merits dispute rather than resolving it. It records that the parties sharply contest the strength of xAI's First Amendment claim, that xAI argues it is likely to succeed, and that the State responds by challenging xAI's standing to raise First Amendment claims on behalf of its users, disputing that xAI has a First Amendment interest of its own at stake, and arguing that the statute is valid under any level of scrutiny. The court called those issues complex, particularly in the context of a new technology and the risks it poses, and said they deserve and will receive full consideration.

Separating the categories matters here. The holding is narrow: the motion is denied because xAI did not carry its burden on irreparable harm, and because the balance of harms and the public interest favor the State. The supporting reasoning is the delay analysis, the treatment of monetary and commercial injury, and the reading of Maixner and Benisek. The extended recitation of legislative-hearing testimony about the harms of nudification technology is background explaining what the legislature was responding to, not a finding that the statute survives First Amendment review. The statements about future proceedings are forward looking, not rulings.

A preliminary injunction allocates risk while a case is litigated. Denying one means the movant did not make the required showing on this record, at this stage. It does not resolve the constitutional question, and this order says so directly.

What Happens Next

xAI filed its notice of appeal to the Eighth Circuit on September 4, 2026, docketed the same day as the order it challenges. The district court transmitted the interlocutory appeal letter to the court of appeals that day and sent a follow-up notice regarding the hearing transcript. As of September 5, 2026, the district court docket reflects no Eighth Circuit ruling and no briefing schedule. The order itself notes that district courts have broad discretion in deciding whether to grant an injunction, and one of the Eighth Circuit decisions it relies on turned on whether a district court abused that discretion in denying preliminary relief given the movant's delay.

In the district court, Minnesota's motion to dismiss remains pending. It was filed on August 19, 2026, the same day as the preliminary injunction hearing, and was originally set for a November 5, 2026 hearing. On September 1, 2026 the court granted a joint motion to stay that briefing: xAI's response is now due 21 days after the mandate issues in any appeal from the preliminary injunction decision, or, if no appeal were taken, 21 days after the deadline to appeal. The November 5 hearing was stricken. The September 4 opinion says a determination of xAI's constitutional claims will be made in the near future because the motion to dismiss places those issues front and center, and notes the court may later consider whether xAI is entitled to permanent injunctive relief on the merits. Under the September 1 stay order, that briefing now waits on the appeal.

Meanwhile the law is in effect. Nothing in the September 4 order changed its operation, and by xAI's own account in the record, the company disabled its nudification tool for Minnesota users on August 1, 2026.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The clearest lesson in this order has nothing to do with the First Amendment. A sophisticated, well-resourced litigant lost an emergency motion largely because it waited nearly three months after the bill was signed and then asked for relief three days before it took effect. The court said as much: the delay itself undercut the claim of urgency. The window in which an emergency posture stays credible opens when the governor signs, not when the compliance deadline arrives.

A second feature is worth naming because it recurs in this kind of litigation. xAI disabled the tool in Minnesota to comply, and that compliance became part of the reason the court found no irreparable harm: penalties were unlikely, the engineering cost was already sunk, and the loss of users was unproven. A company that complies while it litigates has a harder time showing ongoing injury; a company that does not comply faces a penalty of up to $500,000 per violation. That tension is a real cost of preliminary injunction practice against a newly effective regulatory statute.

The substantive question remains completely open. Minnesota placed the obligation on the party that supplies the capability rather than the party that misuses it, and wrote an exemption keyed to whether the tool requires human skill. Whether that structure can be squared with the First Amendment, whether an AI developer can assert its users' expressive interests, and whether the developer has an expressive interest of its own in a model's output are all live questions. None was answered on September 4, and none should be treated as answered because a preliminary injunction was denied. Those questions are teed up in the stayed motion to dismiss; the interlocutory appeal is from the denial of preliminary relief.

This is not legal advice. This article summarizes a court order and a state statute for general information. It does not create an attorney-client relationship and it is not a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney about your situation. Court records and statutes change, and the appeal in this case is pending. Consult a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction before acting.

Related articles

• State deepfake laws across the United States
• How Minnesota regulates synthetic and manipulated media
• Artificial intelligence rules in Minnesota
• California's approach to synthetic media
• Nonconsensual intimate image laws, state by state
• xAI sues Minnesota over its AI nudification law, the original filing

Last updated: 2026-09-05. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-09-05.