The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs announced on Tuesday, 22 September 2026, that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas “yesterday” allowed a land exchange to proceed between the Fish and Wildlife Service and SpaceX in South Texas, according to the DOJ press release opened for this pack. The release’s “yesterday” places the court action on 21 September; DOJ published the notice on 22 September.
The mechanism is denial of a preliminary injunction. DOJ states the court found that the plaintiffs failed to establish an injury in fact to support standing and failed to establish irreparable harm. The opened DOJ release does not name the case caption, the acreage figures beyond “several hundred acres,” the exact parcels, or quote the order text — numeric and conservation framing below are attributed to DOJ’s summary.
Named actors and framing as DOJ states them: Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Environment and Natural Resources Division called the exchange “a win-win for the American people that achieves significant benefits for conservation and national security.” DOJ states the United States will acquire several hundred acres of high-quality habitat in the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge that FWS seeks to protect, and that SpaceX will acquire land with a lower biological value that will help it achieve its mission for NASA and the Air Force. “Lower biological value” and mission framing are DOJ characterisation. Attorneys in ENRD’s Natural Resources Section handled the matter, DOJ says. The DOJ page footer shows “Updated September 22, 2026,” matching the release day opened here; no docket number or PDF order link appears on the opened notice.
What the civilian takeaway is from the opened primary: the injunction ask failed on standing and irreparable-harm grounds as DOJ reports them, so the FWS–SpaceX exchange path the government described is not blocked by that preliminary-injunction request. A preliminary-injunction denial is not a final judgment on the merits of every claim; further litigation steps are not detailed in the DOJ notice opened here.
The exchange sits in a broader South Texas launch-site geography already associated with SpaceX’s Starbase operations near Boca Chica, though the opened DOJ notice does not map the transferred parcels onto named Starbase pads or public road closures. Any pad-expansion or flight-cadence inference beyond DOJ’s NASA/Air Force mission sentence is outside the primary.
What to watch without mood: whether the exchange deeds close; any subsequent merits rulings; FWS documentation of the refuge acres acquired; and how SpaceX uses the transferred land for NASA and Air Force work as DOJ described.
Floor: DOJ OPA 22 Sep — S.D. Tex. denied PI; FWS–SpaceX South Texas land exchange may proceed; US to acquire several hundred acres high-quality habitat in Lower Rio Grande Valley NWR; SpaceX to acquire lower-biological-value land for NASA/Air Force mission (DOJ). Standing + irreparable-harm failures as DOJ reports. No order PDF or acreage schedule opened.