What Actually Happened

Back on May 19, Tarrant County District Court Judge Megan Fahey issued an order in CTC Property LLC v. Shulgin directing Google to remove photos and videos of a data center from Google Maps and any other publicly accessible platform — all within 72 hours of being served.

Google was never made a party to this lawsuit.

The target of the case is a man named Shulgin — identified in the complaint as a technician subcontractor who allegedly photographed the inside of a data center CTC Property LLC is building in Memphis, Tennessee. According to the complaint, Shulgin has both a Russian and U.S. online presence. The photos ended up on Google Maps.

CTC Property LLC is connected to xAI — Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company. The Memphis facility is an AI data center under construction.

The Legal Problem Is Glaring

Professor Eugene Volokh, writing for Reason and The Volokh Conspiracy, flagged this order as "pretty clearly unconstitutional and otherwise improper as to Google."

Courts have broad power to bind parties in a lawsuit. They have very narrow, carefully defined power to bind third parties — like Google — who never showed up, never argued their case, and never had a chance to contest the order.

The First Amendment applies here. Photos posted to a public platform, taken from a location the photographer had access to, occupy real First Amendment territory. Courts cannot simply remove content from the internet because a corporation finds it inconvenient.

The order's language is sweeping. It covers "any and all photographs, videos, or other CTC Confidential Information" posted by Shulgin — and commands "Google LLC, its subsidiaries and affiliates, and any other person or entity with notice of this Order" to comply within 72 hours.

That's an extraordinary prior-restraint-style remedy applied to a company that was never sued, never heard from, and never had its interests represented.

What CTC Is Arguing

The company's position is that keeping the photos online causes "ongoing, irreparable harm" by destroying its "competitive advantage regarding the construction of its artificial-intelligence data facilities."

In plain English: a company building a data center for Elon Musk's AI operation doesn't want competitors — or the public — seeing how it's built.

That's a legitimate business interest. Trade secrets law exists for a reason. If Shulgin genuinely violated a confidentiality agreement or misappropriated proprietary information, CTC has real legal remedies against him.

But ordering a trillion-dollar tech company to delete content within three days — when that company was never given a chance to say a word in court — raises a different set of problems.

What Mainstream Media Is Missing

Most coverage of AI data center stories focuses on energy use, land deals, and job creation. The security and legal apparatus being built around these facilities is getting almost no attention.

This case offers a window into a broader pattern: corporations constructing critical AI infrastructure are using courts to create information blackouts around their facilities.

There's also a Russia angle here that's been almost entirely ignored. The complaint specifically notes Shulgin's Russian online presence. Whether that's legally relevant — or just atmospherics designed to make a trade-secret case sound more sinister — is rarely being examined publicly.

The Google Compliance Question

Will Google comply? That's an open question as of today.

Google has the resources to challenge this order. They have entire legal departments built for exactly this situation. If they comply without contesting, they set a precedent that any company can get a court to scrub Google Maps content by winning a lawsuit against someone else.

Any property owner, any business, any individual with information they'd prefer kept quiet could use this playbook.

What This Means for Regular People

If courts can order Google to delete content based on a case Google wasn't part of, the same logic applies to photos of your neighborhood, your local government, your workplace. The precedent doesn't stop at AI data centers.

Trade secret law is real. Companies deserve protection from genuine theft. But "we don't want people to see what we're building" is a different claim — and using courts to enforce that preference against third parties who were never even in the room creates a significant precedent.

Judge Fahey's order deserves a hard legal challenge. Google should file one.