The State of Georgia is seeking reimbursement for the legal fees it incurred in multiple citizen lawsuits concerning Rivian‘s $5 billion factory in Atlanta, arguing that the litigation was merely intended to delay the construction process.
Local media outlet The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Tuesday that the case returns to the Morgan County court this Wednesday, with the first hearing on the state’s request.
The government, joined by several counties’ local development authorities, is seeking over $540,000 from the six landowners who sued the State last year.
According to several First Amendment advocates cited by the outlet, this is an unprecedented sum of money in a lawsuit between government agencies and citizens.
In early 2024, a Morgan County judge dismissed the lawsuit, where citizens argued that the state of Georgia was taking over the property to get around local zoning rules and land disturbance permits.
The plaintiffs stated that their lawsuits raised legitimate legal concerns and that the reimbursement request constituted “government intimidation.”
“It’s really to put the fear of God into these poor citizens to sit down, shut up and stop bothering us,” attorney John Christy stated. “And if you don’t, we’re going to squash you like a bug.”
While “citizens have the right to voice concerns,” it is not a “legitimate exercise of that right” when “the legal system is weaponized to block a perfectly legal project,” the
Joint Development Authority (JDA) of Jasper, Morgan, Newton and Walton counties wrote in an op-ed.
“The lawsuits filed by the plaintiffs were designed to delay progress, costing taxpayers and the community,” the authority added.
According to Georgia law, governments may pursue litigation costs when lawsuits are deemed “frivulous” — in other words, when it has no legal merit. It is up to the judge to evaluate that.
“This wasn’t a legitimate challenge to a public matter,” Kara Murray, spokesperson for Georgia’s Attorney General Chris Carr said, adding that “it was an attempt to delay economic development by filing several meritless lawsuits against the State, costing taxpayer dollars.”
The state is seeking to recover attorney fees as part of its responsibility to manage public funds. The recovered money will be used to support education, infrastructure and public services.
The lawsuit dismissed last year was not the first time the landowners brought Rivian plant’s zoning before court, since plans for the factory were announced in late 2021.
The Georgia state and the JDA assumed the project site in early 2022.
As local zoning rules do not typically apply to government-owned land, critics said that by doing this, the state was averting a potentially challenging rezoning vote.
In 2022, the citizens in Morgan County asked the court to issue a stop-work order to halt site grading, which was refused.
The judge cited a clear “attempt not to address irreparable harm, but to stop the contruction of the Rivian production plant.”
The group later filed a similar lawsuit in Fulton County. In 2023, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox Jr. ruled the lawsuit frivolous and unlikely to succeed, ordering the plaintiffs to prepay nearly $365,000 to continue the case.
Although the plaintiffs’ obligation to prepay was later overturned on appeal, the lawsuit’s zoning claims were ultimately dismissed by the court as well.
Rivian said back in 2021 that the Atlanta factory would employ 7,500 workers. The project was set to be completed in 2024, however, construction was delayed.
The new facility is expected to take approximately 36 months to build, with partial operations projected to begin in the third quarter of 2027 and sales of its production expected to begin in late 2028.
CEO RJ Scaringe said earlier this year the plant is set to “provide an additional 400,000 units of annual capacity for R2 and R3 once fully built out.”
Last month, the Irvine-based EV maker announced it will establish a new East Coast headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of its broader investment in the state.
The new office will open in late 2025 and expand further in 2026 alongside construction progress at the factory.
Rivian expects to employ about 100 people at the new site by the end of next year and up to 500 once the headquarters is fully operational.
